


That Teenage Feeling

by OldTsuki



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Betty Cooper Loves Jughead Jones, Buggie break!, F/M, Jughead Jones Loves Betty Cooper, One Shot Collection, just a series of sweet scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-05-31 20:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 62,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15127379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldTsuki/pseuds/OldTsuki
Summary: A collection of sweet Bughead one-shots written for the Buggiebreak prompts on tumblr! Just some scenes between Betty and Jug, focusing on a series of different locations, mostly set during the summer after season 2. Some chapters are fully developed one-shots, and some are just drabbles. There are also aesthetics.





	1. A Nap in the Woods

 

Betty is putting the folding chairs into the trunk when Jughead emerges from the house, carrying a crate full of food. She eyes the boxes she can see through the side of the crate, wondering if he realizes that boiling water next to a campfire will be difficult. With a faltering smile, she steps out of the way and lets him place the crate in the space that’s still left in the trunk of her mom’s car.

Since the spring, her mother had been traveling with Polly to the dubious place referred to only as ‘The Farm’. Betty was skeptical about its healing merits, of course, but her sister _did_ seem happy, and she was the first to recognize that their mother deserved to be happy, too. With no word since their departure, Betty had been under the semi-guardianship of Mr Andrews, who checked in every once in a while to make sure that she was still feeling alright about staying in her house alone.

The real answer to _that_ , of course, was that she wasn’t. Not at all. She’d been going slowly insane since the calendar had been flipped over to June, seeing reminders of the happy nuclear family that she used to have everywhere she looked. It wasn’t like living with Chic, where she felt like an insect on a slide beneath his microscope-like gaze. No, it was more like suddenly becoming infamous, suspecting at every moment that someone was angling a camera through a window for a glimpse into her father’s psyche, as if the house could tell them what his mouth wasn’t saying in prison. She was afraid to shower in the house alone, always worried that she might have forgotten to lock the front door, continually convincing herself to keep dashing down and up the stairs to double, triple, quadruple check...and then check again.

Jughead had caught her doing exactly that mad dash just the day before, leaving foot-shaped puddles along the stairway, soap half-lathered into her hair. He’d locked the door and sat outside the bathroom while she finished rinsing off her soap, and then he’d said, “ _Pack a bag, Betty. I’m getting you out of here._ ”

Betty sighs, brushing a little dirt off her hands (which had clung tenaciously to the Coopers’ camping equipment since their last family trip). She’s loaded the tent, two sleeping bags, the large air mattress, the box of cooking equipment, flashlights, her duffel bag of clothes...and the folding chairs. Jughead volunteered to be in charge of the food (since he was particular about which brand of marshmallows they needed), and Betty begins to realize that she should have insisted on going with him to the supermarket rather than hunting for supplies in her parents’ garage.

Getting in the car and backing out of the driveway fills her with a sort of thrill that she’s never experienced before. For the first time in her life, Betty is driving somewhere of her own volition, and neither of her parents gave her permission to do so. Since she asked Archie to bring in the mail while they’re gone, no one will be any wiser. Betty even left one of the lights on upstairs so that local curiosity seekers won’t be tempted to break into the house.

All of those worries evaporate as Jughead begins to play with the radio, pairing his phone’s Bluetooth to the system and queueing up a playlist.

 _Oh for one in my_  
_Oh for once in my life_  
_Could just something go_  
_Could just something go right_

She sings along, turning onto the highway and watching the traffic flow in her side mirror to merge seamlessly. Betty passed her driving exam without missing a single point, of course.

Glancing over, she notices that Jughead is smiling slightly and watching her sing. Feeling a little self-conscious, she says, “Did your family do a lot of camping when you were little?”

If she could take it back, she would as soon as she sees his smile fade and his eyes turn toward the median. He reaches up and adjusts his beanie. “Not really,” he replies, his mind in a certain trailer about ten years ago, if Betty knows the particularities of his expressions at all. “Archie and I always went with his dad when we were kids, every summer. We were supposed to go last July, but he bailed on me.”

Neither one needs to say that it was the weekend that sealed Jason Blossom’s fate, or exactly _why_ both know that Archie chose Riverdale over camping with Jughead, but the weight of the truth hangs between them and sours the hope she’d felt when the music began to play.

“I didn’t bail,” she hopes to shift the conversation to their imminent camping trip instead.

He smirks a little, mouth drawing up on one side in that way that makes her want to kiss him senseless. Jughead’s fingers trace along the top of her right thigh as he says, “That’s just because I didn’t let you. I would have liked to take you to a fancy hotel again, Betts, but my drive-in savings are pretty short.”

She smiles in understanding. “I’m just happy to get out of the house, I don’t need an expensive hotel.”

They drive along, Jughead flipping through the playlist about every thirty seconds into each song. By the time they’re pulling off their exit, Betty has snatched his phone from his hand and slapped his fingers away from the dashboard controls.

They park at the campsite, spilling out of the car and stretching after the drive, reaching their arms toward the low-hanging branches of the trees. It takes some work to set up their tent and unpack the car, but in a short time Jughead is stringing a hammock between two trees and tugging each end to test his knots. He turns to Betty and gestures, motioning her into the hammock first.

Once he curls against her side, and they do some adjusting to make sure that they don’t spill sideways onto the ground, Betty closes her eyes and listens to the gentle sound of his breathing. Before long, the breathing becomes the soft purr of a faint snore. She can’t help smiling lightly at the feeling of utter safety that flows over her like warm water, the tension leaving her body for the first time in what feels like months. Betty can’t remember what it felt like to relax, before her father made his confession. She imagines that it must have felt something like this.

Within seconds, her eyes close too. She’s lost in a dreamscape, where she knows in that particular way of dream-knowing that she’s one year in the past. Betty has just returned from her internship in California, and she’s dying to tell Jughead all about the book release party she arranged for Toni Morrison. She’s walking into his trailer, and when she looks over, Jason and Polly are sitting on his couch, holding hands.

Polly looks up when Betty arrives. “There you are,” she says, smiling too brightly. “We were wondering when you would get here.”

Betty looks over at Jason, but he’s just looking up adoringly at her sister, like there’s nothing else in the world he cares about.

Then she looks over as Jughead walks out of the back hall, carrying a birthday cake covered in candles. He smiles brightly at Betty and says, “Make a wish!”

She’s blowing out the candles when she suddenly feels something pressing against the side of her face. Her eyes fly open—and Betty is in a hammock, curled up with the _real_ Jughead, who is kissing her temple.

He cards his fingers through her hair and meets her eyes, brows drawing together in slight concern. “Dreaming something nice?” He asks, voice tinged with worry.

Betty doesn’t have to tell him that she hasn’t been sleeping through the night at home. She thinks that her sudsy footprints on the stairs probably told him as much.

Rather than explaining her dream, she tilts up her chin to kiss him. To better facilitate the way their mouths melt together, he shifts against her until it feels like when they’re lying side by side on a bed. Betty can feel his entire body against hers, and it sends a thrill through her to think of the things they will more than likely do in the privacy of their tent once the stars are blanketing the sky. She wonders if it’s possible to love anyone more than she loves this incredible boy, right at this exact moment.

He looks at her and she sees his eyes twinkling, seconds before she feels the rumble of his stomach. Betty leaves a quick kiss on the end of his nose and says, “Let’s get a campfire started so that we can roast a few marshmallows. I can’t have you starving to death already, Juggie.”


	2. Road Trip

 

As she’s pulling off the exit she was waiting for, she glances over and sees that a dark curl of hair has fallen across his eyes while he curled in the passenger seat. His beanie is askew, sliding off onto the back of the headrest, bits of his hair clinging to the inside too weakly to hold it in place when he shifted in his sleep.

She’s parking, taking another sip of her second large coffee, the only thing that got her through the night on their extensive trip. They’d started off switching in shifts, taking turns reading in the passenger seat. But after the sun had set, and the night wind rushing past their windshield had chilled in the solid darkness beyond the short reach of the headlights, they had spread a blanket over their knees and he’d fallen deeply asleep.

She’d taken on the rest of the trip without a complaint, stealing glances at his face beneath the streetlights to appreciate how peaceful he looked when he was asleep. Even in that soft, brief glow she could see the gossamer lines crossing his cheeks, where there had been stitches only a few weeks before.

They were driving to a new shore, though, and leaving the memories of all that pain behind them. As the sun broke the horizon and climbed over the ocean, she unbuckled her safety belt, holding it so that it reeled back into the well of the car door noiselessly.

She leaned over, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear as she brushed her lips against his. “Jug,” she said softly, “We’re here.”

His eyes opened, and she saw at once that the blue reflected there was glimmering back at them from the waves of the Florida shore. A grin spread over her face and she turned, opening the car door and kicking her shoes away. She couldn’t wait to swim in those depths and feel the sand on her toes.


	3. Prizes

“Toss the ball into the bucket! You! You, sir, would you care to give it a try? Win a stuffed animal for your lovely lady?”

Jughead rolled his eyes so hard that Betty was certain he’d give himself a retinal tear. She smiled and tugged on his arm, turning both of them toward the carnival worker.

“Come on, Jug, it looks easy,” she pleaded, smiling.

He sighed, pained, and said, “Of course it does, Betts, that’s the trick. These mosquitoes have all the games rigged. It’s a staple of American carnivals everywhere—they draw you in with a deceptively easy game and then suck your money out of your pockets, leaving an unhealthy dose of poisonous self-loathing behind.”

She was still smiling, ignoring his protests. When his dark blue eyes finally turned to her face, she let her bottom lip slide forward just slightly, and she pressed herself a little more firmly against his side.

Jughead sighed again, looked up at the sky, and then dig his free hand into his pocket to produce a crumpled twenty dollar bill.

When he extended his arm toward the carnie, Betty grinned happily and released his other arm. Jughead might have agreed to come with her to the park purely because of the food, but she’d been hoping all day that he’d win her something she could cuddle when she was alone at her parents’ house, something that would remind her of him.

As the carnie took the money, Betty noticed the way that he stared at her just a little too long to be comfortable. It made her suddenly turn and stretch onto her tiptoes, placing a good-luck kiss on her boyfriend’s cheek. He glanced over at her with a half-smile in response, his expression slightly less put-upon.

The carnie held out a tennis ball to Jughead and said, “To prove that this is all fair and square, I’ll let you get in a practice toss. You just throw the ball, like this—“ he threw his own tennis ball gently into the blue plastic bucket, then turned back to Jughead, “—and then you toss in the next one. Go ahead, champ.” Jughead tossed his ball and it remained in the bucket. The carnie smiled, widely enough that Betty could see his eye teeth, and said, “That’s it! Just toss in one, and you get one of these,” he gestured toward the small prizes at the bottom of the stand. “Throw in both, and you win this beautiful girl any big prize of her choice.”

Betty smiled at him. “Easy!” she mouthed, just to be encouraging.

The carnie put two balls down in front of Jughead, leaning against the table to one side—oddly close to Betty, but she had been the one to make Jughead do this in the first place, so she didn’t want to make a scene.

He tossed the first ball and it immediately bounced out of the bucket. The carnie said to Betty, “Oh, bad luck. Looks like he’s a little bad with his aim.”

Jughead glanced at her and she saw his eyebrows twitch, as if he was telling her _See, I told you._

Betty stuck out her lip a bit again, and the carnie said, “You want to try again, champ?”

“No,” Jughead muttered, but handed over more money anyway.

He tried two more throws, which bounced out both times. While he focused, the carnie said to Betty, “Want to give it a try yourself? Maybe this guy just doesn’t have it in him.”

Jughead looked over, his frustration clear, and said, “Yeah, Betty, why don’t you see if it’s _rigged_?”

She frowned a bit, not wanting to upset him, and nodded hesitantly. “Sure, I’ll try,” she said.

The carnie smirked at Jughead and gave Betty two tennis balls. She tossed the first one, and it stayed in the bucket. Glancing over at her boyfriend, whose face was looking like a thunderclap, she threw the second ball.

The carnie smiled widely and turned to her. “You have your pick of the prizes, Miss!” He said too cheerfully. “It looks like you’re the real deal—talent inside to match that beautiful wrapper your mama gave you.”

_Wham_!

Betty jumped as Jughead’s fist collided with the carnie’s mouth, before she even had a chance to fully process that he was hitting on her. Putting one battered converse on the counter, Jughead stepped up and pulled down a stuffed animal while the carnie was still reeling. He got down, turned, and draped the large green stuffed snake over Betty’s shoulders. Hooking a finger in her belt loop, he pulled her to him and kissed her soundly, his mouth pressing hard against hers until she melted against him.

When he released her, Jughead looked over at the glaring carnie, who was rubbing the back of his wrist over his bruised mouth. Before anyone could say anything, Betty threaded her fingers through Jughead’s hand and brought his reddened knuckles to her lips, kissing them better. She left no room for misinterpretation as she did it, her green eyes flicking toward the carnie in a warning.

Both of them satisfied, they began to walk toward the snack stand that Jughead had wanted to visit before they’d become sidetracked. Betty thought that a funnel cake covered in strawberries and powdered sugar sounded perfect right now. She kept walking and slipped her arm around her boyfriend’s waist, smiling up at him when he glanced at her.

“Sorry to put on that show of my less civilized side, Betts,” he muttered.

She reached up with her free hand and angled the stuffed snake’s head so that its pink felt tongue tickled Jughead’s cheek. “I liked it,” she reassured him, grinning. “Never try to come between a King and his Queen.”


	4. Neighbors

 

She was sitting on the balcony again, her fingers dancing over the keys of the laptop, screen turned so that he couldn’t see what she was doing. It was the red floral gown, the one that cut across her arms at three quarters and exposed the little tattoo he could hardly make out from across the street—was it a word? A line? An arrow?

 

One day, he fantasized that he would leave his typewriter, fly down the stairs of his building, dash across the New York traffic guided by the preordained steps of true love’s calling, climb the identical number of flights in her building—their lives were perfectly mirrored, he was convinced, and it was a divine sign that they had both rented rooms on the seventh floors of their apartment complexes—and introduce himself, suavely, all Devil-may-care and dangerous dark-haired charm.

 

She would be immediately attracted, something deep within her unable to resist the opportunity to have a dalliance with a bona-fide bad boy, flinging aside the expectations of her family and friends to wrap him up in her life like a cocoon. And he would emerge later—softer, more delicate, less likely to commit himself to any single flower of feminine beauty because they would all pale in comparison to her, and her love would have ruined him forever, transformed him. Reduced him to primordial soup and rearranged his cells until not a single atom of his being wasn’t stamped with her mark.

 

He’d seen his best friend do it—so many times he couldn’t count. There was no reason to suspect that he would be any different, that he was any stronger, because he knew his own composition better than anyone else, and he knew the bitter truth that his center was soft and malleable and ready for her to imprint herself upon it, only to be extricated through a painful and embarrassing break-up phase that he’d look back upon with shame later in his life.

 

Yes, he’d fantasized many times that he would introduce himself to the woman across the street, whose balcony was situated to look directly into his living room and kitchen, across his own undecorated, fenced-in overhang. He watched her adjust a lock of golden hair now, tucking it behind her ear—and then—

 

Was she _looking back at him?_

 

He squinted, watching her reach for her phone. Her hand hovered, then took a right for her glass of wine instead. She brought the cup to her perfectly formed lips, had a drink that was slightly longer than ladylike, and set the glass down firmly next to her phone. With renewed purpose, he watched her pick it up and tap furiously on the screen.

 

Moments later, _his own phone buzzed._

 

He stared at it. What were cell phones, anyway? He only kept one because no apartment building in New York would let him wire in a landline, and his publisher wanted to be able to contact him at any moment. Like a blind man who had suddenly regained his sight, he fumbled for the device and blinked without comprehension at the screen.

 

**I think one of your packages was delivered to my apartment accidentally.**

 

He’d never considered kissing a mail delivery person before, but he wasn’t a man who discriminated. Whoever brought his mail tomorrow was going to get a huge cash tip, and he was going to write Amazon _immediately_ to thank them for putting his phone number on his shipping label. Thank the powers above for whomever had accidentally taken his package to 918 E 85th St, Apt. R rather than 917 E 85th St, Apt. R.

 

Glancing across the street, he saw her tapping her hand on a small brown box. It was probably a book—he knew it was a book—and it was nothing that he couldn’t wait another day to pick up. But he wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the sign he was being given by the heavens—this was so, so much more than a misdelivered package.

 

He tapped out a message.

 

**I’ll be right over.**

 

Who was worried about becoming primordial soup? If she was going to eat him up and spit him out, he was fine with that. And deep down, in his heart of hearts, he believed that there was one person out there who was meant to find him, anyway. What if she turned out to be the one?


	5. Flight

They’d woken up at some ungodly hour to get to the airport in time for their flight. Betty insisted on having enough extra time that they would be able to look through the shops inside the terminal, and when Jughead asked her why she needed three hours to look through less than ten stores, she tilted her head and regarded him with puzzlement.

 

“For security, of course,” she said, her brows drawing together. “You never know how long that will take. There might be a long line.”

 

That was the exact instant that it really sank home for her–Jughead had never flown before. She’d gone to California for an internship her Sophomore year of high school, by herself, so she thought nothing about booking the flight overseas. He’d just blinked in response to her matter-of-fact statement and said nothing but, “Oh.”

 

She began to suspect that he might have been nervous when she threaded her hand through his after they’d checked their large bags and picked up their boarding passes. Betty had been deeply attuned to all things Jughead for years, and his slightly sweaty palms were a fair indication that some sort of strenuous mental process was taking place below that fringe of raven hair that seemed destined to always fall over his eyes.

 

The next sign came when he somewhat obsessively checked his passport, license, and boarding pass for the fourth time, making sure that all the names were alike, and none of the issuing agencies had forgotten to put “ _the third_ ” after his full name.

 

Betty looked down at her passport, license, and boarding pass a few times too, but for a wholly different reason. Every time she saw the name _Elizabeth Jones_ typed officially across each one, her stomach seemed to be taking flight without the rest of her body, and a huge smile spread across her face.

 

When the gate agent asked Jughead to put his carry-on bag on the conveyor belt, he said, “Why?”

 

She gave him a look as she set her belongings in the plastic bins, slipping off her shoes and dropping them onto the conveyor belt too. As the agent glared at Jughead with an expression that clearly read _Just do it and stop asking questions_ , he gave in and did as he was told. Betty went through the metal detector first, stepping out and retrieving her shoes from the end of the scanner.

 

Jughead was selected to be patted down–because _of course_ he would be after having an attitude with the gate agent–and Betty waited calmly while he complied with the check. He even joked with her that they’d gotten the wrong Jones, and his dad had already gotten used to that sort of thing when he was in prison, so Betty laughed in an effort to dispel any of the nerves she was strongly suspecting he was hiding, even though she didn’t find it funny.

 

They wandered through the terminal after locating their gate. She bought a cafe americano from Starbucks and a pair of soft neck pillows from a convenience store, wrapping one around Jughead and snapping it in place over his collar. He bought a new crime novel, and she found a perfectly dreadful romantic mystery to pass the time they’d spend on their international flight.

 

When they were called back to their gate for boarding, Betty took Jughead’s hand again. Based on the exponential increase of palm sweat, she was at that point absolutely certain that he was terrified.

 

As they took their seats, Betty asked Jughead if he wanted to sit by the window.

 

He paled. “No, you can, Betts,” he said, his tone pinched.

 

She took her seat and looked over at him with concern, placing one hand on his knee and turning herself to face him. “It’s going to be okay, Jug,” she said reassuringly. “I’ve flown before. These things are really safe–crashes happen in the movies.”

 

“You’re not helping,” he muttered, looking up at the ceiling as a businessman put a case in their overhead bin. “What if that’s a bomb?”

 

Betty rolled her eyes and said quietly, “It’s not, Jug, you saw how much security there was. You’re fine. _We’re_ fine. Just try to relax–maybe you can sleep.”

 

He laughed shortly. “Right, and I’ll wake up when the plane is in flames and we’re plummeting into the ocean. No, thanks.”

 

She sighed. “Maybe you can read?” she suggested hopefully, sliding back into her chair and opening the front cover of her new novel.

 

Jughead pressed his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “Unlikely,” he said, one hand squeezing the top of her leg. She let him do it, even though it was a little more pressure than she found comfortable.

 

As the stewardess explained the safety precautions, Jughead watched the demonstration and Betty watched him. She saw each time that his eyes widened slightly as the flight crew ran over all the possible emergency scenarios and safety equipment that might be necessary on the plane. By the time they were buckling their safety belts and turning off their phones, his fingers were digging deeply into her leg and she was squirming away from his hand.

 

“Jug,” she said, slipping her hand beneath his. “It’s fine. Pretend we’re on a bus. Close your eyes if you have to.”

 

He shook his head, threading his fingers between hers. “I can’t,” he said simply, eyes glued to the window.

 

As the plane taxied around the airport and took its place on the runway, Betty gave up trying to read and looked out the window, too. She felt Jughead squeezing her hand firmly as the plane sped forward, waiting for the feeling of brief weightlessness that she knew would come as soon as they lifted off. Jughead made a small noise in the back of his throat as the world fell away outside the window, and Betty looked over at him again in concern.

 

“See?” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”

 

Betty went to open her book, but Jughead quickly placed his hand on it instead. “Betts—can you just hold on a little while?” he asked, when she looked over at him curiously.

 

Looking like he was sitting in the dentist’s chair, or perhaps waiting to be called into the principal’s office, Jughead’s eyes met hers imploringly. Betty covered his hand with hers and said, “Of course, Jug, whatever you need.”

 

They stayed that way while the plane leveled out. She could feel the tension starting to leave him as his fingers eased against hers, his chest rising and falling as he took several measured breaths. Finally, he glanced over at her and said, “Thanks, _Mrs. Jones._ Thank you for understanding.”

 

She smiled and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “As long as we both shall live,” she replied happily, squeezing his fingers in hers.


	6. Staycation

It sort of started as an unspoken dare shared between the two of them. On Monday, when the alarm went off and Jughead slapped it irritably into silence, Betty rolled over and slipped her leg over him, melting against his side. He groaned. “I don’t want to go in,” he complained.

Betty nestled against him, her lips grazing over the back of his shoulder. She smiled as she felt him shiver, even though it was extremely cozy under their blanket. “Then don’t go,” she said, her voice laced with the promise of what they’d do if he didn’t.

Jughead rolled over so that they were facing each other. He raised an eyebrow, slipping a hand over her hip and squeezing a little. “You don’t have to twist my arm or anything,” he muttered sarcastically. “Are you serious? Will you call in too?”

Betty bit her lower lip, looking up at him through her lashes. She pretended to consider while his fingers twitched against her skin, fully aware of how hard he always fell for the look she’d given him. There was really no need to think about it—she’d known that she was going to call in since he had turned to look at her.

“Sure,” she said, smiling a little, and she reached for her phone. Jughead rolled onto his back and fumbled for his too, sending a quick text message to his boss. After Betty set her phone on her nightstand, she was suddenly assailed by her fiancé. He shifted until he was positioned over her on all fours, dipping his head to kiss and nip a line along her neck that immediately had her squirming beneath him.

And that was Monday…by Wednesday, they were out of groceries and Betty was starting to worry that Jughead wasn’t going to have a job to go back to if he kept using his sick days. She was personally dreading looking at her work email, since it was undoubtedly full of articles she needed to edit or review.

She didn’t need to point out that the fridge was empty, incidentally. As they were cuddling on their couch, Betty’s head resting against Jughead’s chest, his stomach grumbled so strongly that she both heard and felt it.

She looked up and met his apologetic eyes. “You ate the pickles in the middle of the night,” she said, her tone only slightly admonishing. “Unless you want ketchup and honey soup today, we have to leave the apartment.”

But both of them were all too aware of what that meant—in a small town like theirs, going to the grocery store would undoubtedly end in an encounter with at _least_ one person they knew. They’d have to take the exponential risk that that person may or may not be related in some way to either of their jobs, or they would have to go in disguise.

She looked at Jughead speculatively, trying to decide if he could pass for actually being sick. Maybe if she convinced him to let her put a little blush on his nose, he would look appropriately feverish.

“I’ll go,” he said, before she could mention the makeup. “Just text me whatever you want me to get, and I’ll be back in an hour.”

Betty was immediately grateful that he had decided to take on the risk of being caught in public himself. Even after all the years they’d been together, Jughead wasn’t any less chivalrous than he’d been when he was seventeen years old. She watched as he pulled on a plain grey hoodie and used the hallway mirror to make sure that his distinctive raven hair was tucked out of sight. He picked up a pair of her oversized sunglasses from the side table where she kept her purse and keys, looking over at her with a questioning expression.

“Better?” He asked, slipping on the sunglasses.

She smirked and said, “All you’re missing is a plastic nose and a fake mustache.”

He laughed and dropped the glasses back onto the table. “Back in a few, sweetheart.”

Betty went into the kitchen after he left, considering what she should put on the list when she text messaged him. They’d been living on leftovers and sandwiches while they’d been calling in sick, and she sort of wanted to cook him something that would really blow him away. For a foodie like Jughead, that wasn’t difficult to do—but Betty felt like experimenting.

Glancing over at the stand mixer, she had an idea. Betty unlocked her phone and began to type, trying to be as specific as possible. One time he’d gone to the grocery store and come back with bags and bags of miscellaneous items that couldn’t be combined to create _anything_ —and he’d just said that it all looked so good, he had to get it. Since then, Jughead had only been allowed to grocery shop with a list. Otherwise, they’d never have enough money in their account for rent.

She nervously waited as time passed, hoping that none of his coworkers would be shopping right now. It felt like hours went by before the door opened again, and Jughead appeared with several plastic bags in each hand.

Betty eyed the bags, thinking of her list. “Jug,” she said, her tone a warning, “Did you get the things I asked for?”

He set down the bags on the kitchen island and smiled at her reassuringly. “Of course I did, Betty. I’m not _totally_ incompetent without you.”

She leaned over and kissed him lightly, replying in a slightly teasing voice, “You’re not.”

He began to draw things out of the bags and set them out on the counter. “Before you say anything, I didn’t stick strictly to the list. I mean, I got the things that you asked for, and I thought that we could make something else too.”

Suspicious, she looked at the ingredients he was removing from the bags. Mentally running through the recipes she was familiar with, she looked up and said, “Cookies?”

Jughead shook his head in response, setting down a bag of white chocolate chunks. Betty tapped a finger against her cheek in thought, unable to figure it out. With a slightly shy look, he said, “Blondies.” His smile wondered with excitement when he told her, and Betty couldn’t resist throwing her arms around his neck to kiss him.

“You’re adorable,” she gushed, nuzzling the end of her nose against his.

Jughead lifted her onto the edge of the counter, stepping between her knees as he kissed her again. She ran her fingers through his hair, tilting her head to brush her tongue over his lips and get a taste of him.

When they broke the kiss, both of them smiled hazily at one another in a mutually satisfied daze. Betty felt like Jughead still looked at her now the way he had when he was fifteen and he’d climbed a ladder up to her bedroom window in her parents’ house. She hoped that maybe he would keep looking at her that way the rest of their lives.

“I’m glad we took this vacation together,” Jughead said softly, running his fingers through her hair. “I would spend every minute of my life with you if I could, and I still wouldn’t get enough of you.”

Betty grinned, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Say that again after you make those blondies while I cook some dinner,” she teased.

Her fiancé blinked at her. “Me? Really? You’re going to let me in the kitchen—to _cook_ something?”

She slid forward and hopped off the island. “You have to learn sometime, so that you can start bringing me breakfast in bed.”

Jughead grinned back at her. “I’ll start tomorrow,” he promised. “As you wish.”


	7. Happy Ending

 

Archie tightened his fingers around his phone, staring down at the book in his hand. “No, Ronnie, this isn’t a joke. Just look at the picture on the cover—that is absolutely Jughead. I would bet my life on it.”

He paused, listening to a voice on the other end.

“No, I don’t know if he’s with Betty. He probably knows what happened to her, though. If you and I can get in contact with him somehow, we can make him tell us—“

The voice interrupted sharply.

“Okay, fine, we’ll ask. But only after I kill him for running away in the first place. Ronnie, I realized the other day, it’s been nine years. Nine. I’ve been worrying for nine years that I’ll see them on the news, dead or in prison…”

The voice interrupted again, more gently this time.

“Yeah, me too. Okay, I’ll call you back after I get a hold of the publisher. Yeah. Love you too.”

 

**Nine years earlier.**

 

“Betty Cooper, report to Principal Weatherbee’s office immediately.”

She felt the weight of her classmates’ eyes immediately, as she rose from her desk and walked out of the room. Betty was just as bewildered as they were—she had absolutely no idea what she had done to warrant being summoned to the main office like this, and she felt a spike of dread as she worried about what would happen when she got there.

In the hallway, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. Without looking, she knew that it would be a message from Jughead. He didn’t need to ask her to tell him what was going on, of course—she would have text messaged him anyway.

When she opened the door to the principal’s office, after a nod from the secretary, Betty was surprised to see a middle-aged woman in a pantsuit that rose from one of the chairs near the desk as she entered.

“Hello, you must be Elizabeth. I’m Sharon Townsend, the social worker that has been assigned to your case. You can call me Ms. Townsend.”

Betty looked over at Principal Weatherbee, who was regarding her steadily over his half-moon spectacles. In a calm voice, he said, “Where have you been staying since your mother left town, Miss Cooper?”

She bit her bottom lip. “At home,” she said, unable to stop herself from frowning.

Ms. Townsend clicked her tongue. “Has no one told you, Elizabeth? Your mother was checked into a state mental health facility nearly four weeks ago. Since your father is also incarcerated, that means that you are now a ward of the state, until you turn eighteen years old.”

Betty felt her whole body chill. She stared at the social worker, not totally comprehending. “What?” Betty asked hesitantly, feeling like she must have misunderstood.

With a sigh, Ms. Townsend explained in the sort of tone that one usually reserves for particularly stupid children. It made Betty resent her immediately. “You are now a foster child, and I have placed you with a family in town so that you will not need to change schools. Immediately after school, I will drive you home so that you can collect your belongings, and then I will transport you to your temporary foster home.”

She didn’t even realize that she was shaking her head until Principal Weatherbee cleared his throat. “It’s unfortunate that this has happened to you and your family, Ms. Cooper. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”

Her ears were ringing as the social worker’s words settled in her mind. No—Ms. Townsend was right, no one had told her that her mother was checked into a mental facility. And she had been holding down the fort at home, waiting daily for word from her mother or her sister, with Jughead staying over more often than not to keep her company.

It was like receiving this news was not only breaking her family more permanently apart, but it was also threatening to rip away the private routines she’d established with Jughead since they’d been living together unsupervised. Betty looked forward to going home in the evening and cooking dinner together, curling up on her sofa and working on the homework she insisted that they needed to complete, falling asleep in each other’s arms.

She knew they were young, sure. But it was a perfect sort of fragile existence, and it felt simply unfair that Ms. Townsend, a total stranger, could walk in and tear it apart.

She rose from her chair, blinking rapidly to fight against the stinging in her eyes as she said, “I understand. Thank you.” Even though thanking them for this news felt like thanking someone for stabbing her in the heart.

She wasn’t even fully out of Weatherbee’s office before she was text messaging Jughead. Betty walked straight for the Blue and Gold office.

Wiping at her cheeks with both hands, she sank into a chair and willed herself to stop crying. She was just about to clench her palms as tightly as she could to distract herself from the emotional turmoil she was feeling when the door opened. Jughead rushed to her side, wrapping his arms around her in bewilderment as she buried herself against his chest. Stroking a hand over her hair, he said gently, “What happened?”

Betty drew in a deep breath. “Mom isn’t coming back,” she said, seeing the shift in his face as he registered exactly what that meant.

Weeks before, when Jughead’s Dad was picked up for a minor violation of his parole, he’d returned to his foster family on the south side. Of course, they weren’t really able to keep a sixteen year old boy from living his life, and he’d essentially moved in with Betty as soon as his social worker had evicted him from his home.

Jughead wasn’t a stranger to that system. He shifted his hand off her hair until he was cupping her cheek, his blue eyes looking into hers sympathetically.

“What happened in the office?”

She glanced away from him. It felt too alien to say, like explaining what she’d been told would somehow make the situation more real. Betty bit her lip, her eyes prickling again as they filled with new tears.

“I can’t, Jug,” she whispered.

He notched a finger below her chin and turned her face back to meet his. Jughead leaned in and kissed her softly, tenderly, his lips melting against hers and communicating all of his sweetness with the delicacy of its delivery. Betty couldn’t stop the tears from dripping over her cheeks then, couldn’t help it as she felt her heart breaking within her. It wasn’t just having to give up living with Jughead—this was the end of her family, and she was all that was left.

He kissed her cheeks, brushing his lips over her tears before he wiped them away with his thumbs. “It isn’t how it’s supposed to be, I know. I know, baby.”

At his words, she crumbled even more. Of course Jughead understood, without her needing to explain at all.

But it was what he said next that locked her breath in her throat and sent her mind reeling.

“Let’s just run away. For real this time. We only have one more year of school…we’ll take our savings, we’ll get a bus ticket, we’ll go wherever you want to go.”

She felt a smile tug at her lips through her tears, despite her earlier dejection. “Like Romeo and Juliet?” she whispered.

“Only with a happy ending,” he replied, smiling back wryly. “Just say the word, and we’ll go.”

 

**Present time**

 

Archie watched Veronica smooth her immaculate pencil skirt for the upteenth time and resisted rolling his eyes. They’d been dating on and off since high school, and Veronica had risen up quickly to fill the Betty-shaped void that had formed in his life the day she disappeared from Riverdale, but the two girls just weren’t interchangeable like that. Betty was smooth and supportive, always looking at him with those soft green eyes and saying exactly the right thing to encourage him. Veronica, in sharp contrast, had edges that sometimes chafed and sometimes bruised as she took hold of his life and shook it into compliance with her expectations.

He loved her, though, in a way completely different than the way he loved Betty. And finding her wasn’t romantic in any way—finding her, finding Jughead, would be the answer to a riddle that had woken him up countless nights during his young adulthood.

When the hired car pulled over, the driver got out first and opened Veronica’s door.

“Thank you,” she purred, pressing a cash tip into his hand. Archie clambered out after her like a less evolved specimen of the human race, needing to jog a few steps to catch up with her quick stiletto-driven pace.

They were on the sidewalk of an apartment complex in LA. Veronica had gotten first-class tickets for both of them after Archie told her that he’d finally gotten an address. He’d needed to call the publishing company several times and write several letters, but eventually he’d gotten a response directly from the author himself. Whatever Archie had been expecting when he opened his mail, it certainly wasn’t a plain sheet of paper with nothing but an address scrawled in Jughead’s unmistakable handwriting.

Maybe Jughead had been expecting to receive a letter in response, like they were pen pals. Maybe he’d forgotten about the force of nature that was Veronica Lodge, and how she was fully capable of moving heaven and earth if necessary to get her way. Maybe, Archie could hope, he was hoping that this exact scenario would unfold.

Veronica stepped into the elevator and firmly pressed the button for the tenth floor. They didn’t speak as they rose together, both starting forward at once when the doors slid open at their destination. With the same self-assuredness she’d had at fifteen, Veronica raised her fist and knocked.

There was some brief scuffling beyond the door. “Honey—can you get that? My hands are covered in dough.”

It was without a doubt Jughead’s voice. Veronica’s dark eyes turned toward Archie incredulously, then. She mouthed the word ‘honey’ and turned back to the door, schooling herself into the picture of composure once more.

The door swung open. Archie and Veronica found themselves face to face with all five feet six inches of blonde-haired, green-eyed Betty Cooper.

No, Archie edited, seeing the ring on her finger. That must be Betty Jones now.

He gaped as he took in her cardigan, and the embroidered word “Honey” where a name would usually go. She was clearly wearing some sort of uniform—and then he said as it clicked, “Are you a waitress?”

Betty’s mouth fell open, staring from one to the other with clearly visible shock. At Archie’s inane question, she snapped her jaw shut and looked over her shoulder into the apartment.

“Holden,” she said, her tone a little irritated. “What’s going on?”

Jughead—no, did she say Holden—appeared at her side, his hands covered in floury dough. When he saw their visitors, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Archie stared at him, his eyes struggling to unwrite nine years from the face of the person who he’d grown up with, who had slept on his floor and stayed up all night playing video games too many times to count.

He just said, “Oh.”

Betty huffed and stepped aside, looking back at Archie and Veronica. “Come in,” she said.

They stepped inside as if they were entering a wormhole, looking at each other in mixed terror and bewilderment. Whatever Archie had been expecting when they flew across the country, it wasn’t this.

“Get you anything?” Jughead asked, his voice catching on the beginning of the question.

Veronica posed herself on a bar stool next to the kitchen window, setting her purse on the counter. “A bottle of water, please, if you have it.”

“Of course,” Jughead said, rinsing his hands in the sink and turning to the fridge.

Unexpectedly, Betty jabbed one finger into Archie’s chest. “To answer your question, I’m not a waitress. I run a catering company with Holden.”

Archie blinked again at the name. “Are…are you guys really calling yourselves _Honey_ and _Holden_?” And before she could respond with the snappiness he saw flashing in her eyes, he added, “What _happened_?”

Betty looked over at Jughead. He twisted the cap of Veronica’s water for her and set it on the counter, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel again. Bracing himself against the counter, he said, “We were tired of the shit that Riverdale kept throwing at us, Arch. So, we made our own happy ending.”

He looked back over at Betty, who was smiling faintly toward Jughead in a way that took Archie back to the cafeteria in tenth grade. She sighed heavily, sitting down next to Veronica. “We had to change our names when we ran away,” she admitted.

Veronica sipped her water before she said, “Choosing the most ridiculous names possible definitely kept my private investigators from tracking both of you down.”

Jughead snorted. “We planned it that way.”

But then Betty was throwing her arms around the brunette, a smile spreading hesitantly over her face. As she hugged Veronica, she said, “I’ve missed you so much.”

That was when Archie couldn’t resist saying, “Not enough to contact us. You knew where _we_ lived.”

Though it could have driven a wedge through the heart of their fledgling reunion, Veronica spoke next. “Oh my god, Betty—did you _marry_ him? And the two of you live _here_?” She glanced at Archie. “I take back everything I’ve said in nine years. Archie, they’re _happy_.”

As tears spilled over her cheeks, Archie thought that he might never understand women. She and Betty hugged again, and he looked awkwardly over at Jughead. “ _Holden Smith?_ ” Archie mouthed, frowning.

Jughead shrugged. “Guilty as charged,” he commented out loud, smirking. “And Archie—thank you for doing this. I wasn’t sure—“

Betty looked up. “Did you contact him?” She asked, frowning.

“No, he contacted my publisher.”

Archie remembered what he was holding. “Because you put your face on every copy of a bestselling novel, like leaving town would make everyone forget what you looked like.” He slapped the book down on the counter in front of Jughead.

With a laugh, he turned the cover over and signed the first page, drawing a pen out of his pocket. Archie rolled his eyes. At least, if everything else had changed, it seemed like the two of them were still the same.


	8. A Tryst in the Twilight

 

Princess Elizabeth listened to the sounds of the castle as the sun set, holding her chin steady as her handmaiden carefully brushed her unbound golden locks. She gazed out the window of her chambers, watching the shadows grow long beneath the trees of the hidden bower beyond the castle walls. It was a place that Elizabeth knew well—a place she went to often, and a place that she intended to visit tonight.

 

With the smallest gesture, she dismissed Lady Ethel. Clutching the brush, she bowed to Princess Elizabeth as she backed out of the chamber, not once turning her back to her mistress. When she was alone, Elizabeth rose from her seat and crossed to the window, trying to get a better view of the trees.

 

Just there—a flash of silver. She gripped the window sill, straining for another glimpse.

 

Before she could discern the figure she sought, there was a noise at her chamber door. Elizabeth turned, seeing one of her father’s attendants knocking hesitantly in the frame.

 

“My pardon, malady. Your father, the King, requests your presence in the meeting chamber at your earliest convenience.”

 

She nodded once to show that she’d heard, letting out a long breath as she left the window. Hopefully her father would be brief. Lifting the hem of her gown to hasten her steps, she made her way through the castle passages to her father’s meeting chamber.

 

When she arrived, she immediately noticed an unfamiliar lord standing with her father before the hearth. It was impossible to overlook his surprisingly red hair. He must have been one of the noblemen from the west, who had been meeting with her parents to forge a treaty between their warring kingdoms. Wondering what her father could possibly want with her when he was entertaining a nobleman, she quietly entered the room.

 

“Good evening, father,” she said, crossing over the rug to place a chaste kiss on her father’s cheek.

 

He smiled at her. “Ah, Elizabeth. We were waiting for you. I want you to meet Lord Archibald, of River’s Dale.”

 

Elizabeth curtseyed briefly, lowering her gaze to the noble man’s feet. “My pleasure, lord,” she murmured in greeting.

 

Lord Archibald was silent for a moment, before he nodded curtly and looked at her father. “Yes, I will agree to your terms,” he announced. The King stepped forward and clasped his hand, shaking vigorously.

 

“The union of our great kingdoms will yield only prosperity for all,” her father replied magnanimously.

 

Elizabeth felt as if ice had filled her stomach, spreading upward toward her heart as she watched the exchange. As the youngest, only unmarried daughter of the kingdom, she had a duty to marry for the greatest benefit of her family’s line.

 

She thought again of the bower outside her chamber window. Just as she began to truly despair, she noticed that her father and their guest were looking at her. Elizabeth spread her most diplomatic smile across her face, dipping into another curtsy. “I beg permission to retire, lord,” she said to her father.

 

He nodded, smiling faintly at her. “Yes, we shall dine together in the morn.” It seemed that the decree was meant for everyone in the room. Elizabeth fought against her growing sense of dread, realizing that she would be expected to converse with the visiting lord when they all sat and ate together.

 

“May you have the sweetest of dreams, Princess.”

 

Though she was surprised by Lord Archibald’s rather forward statement, Elizabeth responded with a slightly warmer smile and made her way out of the room.

 

She walked quickly toward her chambers, but before she turned the corner, she heard two voices speaking openly in the corridor. Slowing her step so that she would not surprise the speakers, she cautiously approached and remained unseen.

 

“Yes, a union by marriage will be the only way for their kingdom to survive. Lord Archibald has offered all of their military strength in exchange for Elizabeth’s hand.”

 

“But is he aware that the King has ordered the assassination of his father many times?”

 

She raised a hand to her mouth to cover her gasp, her eyes widening in shock. If Lord Archibald found out about her father’s treachery, perhaps after she’d been removed from her ancestral home, what would become of her? Elizabeth thought that she might be descending into a den of wolves, and the feeling of dread grew even more within the core of her being.

 

She turned and retreated down the corridor, not wanting to see who had been speaking about such secrets so openly. Quickly, she moved aside the old tapestry and let herself into the north passageway, her feet stepping lightly over the flagstones of the landing. As she turned around the curling stair in a rapid descent, she could think of only one thing in her turmoil.

 

She dashed across the grounds toward the tree line, bursting from the vine-covered door that marked the only weakness in her father’s impenetrable castle. As she found the old path, her feet were her better guide. The sun had set and she was in essence blind, since the canopy of leaves overhead were separating her from the glow of the emerging starlight.

 

When she reached the bower, the trees opened to allow a faint glow to illuminate the wood. The first thing she saw was a modest pile of silver polished armor. Then she found the figure she’d been looking for as the sun set, wearing his linen underclothes and a thick coat. She threw herself into Sir Forsythe’s waiting arms, nestling her head against his chest.

 

“Whoa,” he said in surprise, but his arms wrapped around her anyway and he smoothed a hand over her silky hair. “Elizabeth—what is it?”

 

Tears welled in her eyes as she looked up at him. There was no way that she could claim the right to her own happiness over peace between their two kingdoms, even if her own father had unfairly attacked Lord Archibald’s family. However much she might love Sir Forsythe, she knew that she would have to do her duty first.

 

“I think my father is going to betroth me,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m afraid that I might never see you again.”

 

His face shifted in grim understanding at once. They’d known for many years that this day would come, but Sir Forsythe and Princess Elizabeth had grown up together and fallen deeply in love. The circumstances of their births would forever prevent them from marrying, and they’d agreed to steal whatever happiness they could for as long as they had.

 

This felt like the day of reckoning that she’d been hoping for so long would never arrive. Forsythe was one of her father’s favored jousting knights, and he’d been writing Elizabeth verses ever since she’d learned to read as a girl. She lived for each kiss she doled out in reward for his successful matches, each favor she tucked beneath his armor, each clandestine meeting in their wooded bower—the place that they’d kept secret since they’d begun their illicit courtship. Though they’d only ever exchanged kisses, Elizabeth felt as if being near Forsythe filled her with a sense of completion that she rarely felt in her otherwise empty life amongst the castle’s vast halls.

 

He cupped her face in one gloved hand, lowering his lips against hers. As Elizabeth gave in to the kiss, she felt him lower his other arm around her waist. “I will always follow you, Elizabeth. To the ends of the world, if I have to. They might send you to any kingdom they wish, but I will always remain at your side. Your loyal knight and protector.”

 

His words did the trick to calm her, taming her frantic heart and drying the unshed tears in her eyes. Yes, of course—even if Lord Archibald discovered her father’s treachery, Sir Forsythe would be there to keep her safe. She did not need to fear being wed to an enemy of her family, so long as he remained her true companion.

 

Elizabeth smiled and stole another kiss, rising onto her toes to reach his lips. His dark hair was falling over his eyes again. It was lucky that he was still holding her waist when he drew her lower lip gently between his teeth, because her legs went weak with the pleasure and she might have swooned without his support. So long as this man remained with her, Elizabeth feared nothing. She’d marry Lord Archibald if she had to, and now she felt like she had the strength to overcome the truth of her father’s transgressions.

 

“I love you,” she whispered, as he broke the kiss and looked deeply into her eyes. Elizabeth reached up and brushed the hair away from his face, her fingers lingering over the familiar feel of his brow.

 

He smiled in a melancholy way, his mouth drawing to one side as it did when he spoke of regrets. Usually he spoke in frustration against the parents that had sold him as a squire when he was still a young child, but tonight he surprised her and said, “It’s going to be the most difficult challenge I’ve ever faced to share you with another man.”

 

Her stomach curled at his words, not unpleasantly, and her heart leaped into her throat. Elizabeth whispered, “I wish you didn’t have to.”

 

Forsythe leaned down and kissed her neck, one hand slipping over the back of her head as his lips began to work their way down to her collar. She felt her chest heaving as she gasped for breath, each brush of his mouth and nip of his teeth catching the air within her. Elizabeth reached down and tugged his glove off his hand, dropping it to the mossy ground and raising her hands to catch the other. She didn’t need to tell him that she wanted to feel his bare hands against her skin. As soon as she’d tugged away both gloves, Forsythe was smoothing his palms over her collar and dipping his fingers beneath the edges of her gown.

 

Elizabeth reached back and found the laces of her outer dress, loosening them so that Forsythe could push the fabric off her shoulders. She kissed him firmly as her gown pooled around her feet, stepping toward him and out of her finery.

 

He slid his coat off as she kissed him, breaking away from her lips to spread it over the ground. They’d lain together like this many times, exchanging kisses as they gazed up at the stars. But this time, Elizabeth felt that their evening would be different. The impending reality of her marriage to Lord Archibald, her relocation to another kingdom, and the complexity that would define their already messy series of trysts lit a fire within her heart that could not be quelled by anyone but her love.

 

Her fingers trembled slightly as she found the laces of her shift. Forsythe’s eyes widened in realization of her intention, but he made no move to stop her. They’d never crossed this line before, of course, because it could mean ruin for either of them. But Elizabeth felt suddenly that this might be one of the last opportunities she had to be with her lover in this way, and she did not want to pass her life wondering what it would have been like to give over to her desires.

 

As her shift pooled at her feet, Forsythe looked up at her with a reverent expression. His deep blue eyes met hers, full of questioning adoration. “Elizabeth…” he said softly, reaching out with one hand to run his fingers over the exposed skin of her hip.

 

She knelt beside him on his coat, thinking of nothing but how much she loved him. “Forsythe, tonight…I want all of you.”

 

At her words, he sucked in a breath, his eyes searching her face. Before he could say anything else, she reached out and began to unlace his linen undershirt. As her fingers brushed against his chest, he groaned.

 

She’d just barely gotten his shirt over his head when he leaned her back against the coat, running his hands over her skin until he was supporting her head with one and cupping her breast with the other. Elizabeth let him settle himself between her legs, thinking only vaguely of the consequences that might befall them both if they carried on. Right now, she was desperate to know him before she was wed to a complete stranger.

 

He was gentle with her, more tender than he’d ever been as they kissed, as if she were a delicate thing that was easily crushed. Elizabeth thought that, no matter what happened to her now, at least her heart had known one night of true happiness. As she curled against his side in the privacy of their secret bower, she let herself trace nonsense over his chest with the tip of her finger. Forsythe kissed the top of her head, nuzzling his nose into her hair.

 

She looked up at him, smiling as she met his eyes. “You’ll always be my protector?” Elizabeth asked, her heart full as she took in the way the starlight flowed against his cheek.

 

“You’re my sun and my stars,” he replied. “I love you, Princess.”


	9. Vanished

 

_When Forsythe P Jones III is asked to investigate a string of disappearances, which quickly unfold to become gruesome murders, he realizes that Elizabeth Cooper is the key to cracking the case._

Forsythe Pendelton Jones III might not have been the easiest consultant to work with, but he was undoubtedly the best. If you could put up with his penchant for good brandy and his peculiar way of speaking, then you were assured of a quick and flawless investigation into any mystery you brought his way.

At least, that was what the people at the station had told Elizabeth Cooper when she’d come asking for help in finding some missing persons. The officers seemed to think that it was natural for people to go missing around an estate like Dalehouse, with its rambling gardens and myriad secret passageways. It wasn’t her idea to live in such a place, of course. Her family had always owned the land, and an eccentric great-grandfather had built the mansion at great expense to impress his lovely young bride. In its prime, the house must have been a true sight to behold. Elizabeth understood that people had travelled for miles from all around the countryside to attend her great-grandmother’s balls, though she could hardly picture the massive dust-coated ballroom as anything other than its current neglected maw of a space. Not once in her life had she seen the candles lit, the furniture un-draped, or heard even a hint of music within its walls.

Partially, that was because of her mother. It was only recently that her father had finally sent for the doctors to remove Elizabeth’s mother to the asylum, and that only after she’d been caught more than three times trying to burn the house down in the night.

It was Elizabeth’s sister that went missing first. For a few days, she’d expected that Polly had simply gotten lost in one of the secret passages. Perhaps she was playing a game, and avoiding Elizabeth intentionally to scare her. But as the moon grew round, a sense of certainty took hold that she and her father were the only living souls left within the mansion’s walls. When she was a child, exploring the house had seemed like an endless game. Now that she was grown, it felt like a set of ancestral chains around her feet, scaring away all of her potential suitors, leaving her to rot like a cloth-covered chair in a forgotten ballroom.

When the gardener’s boy vanished a few days later, Elizabeth knew that something sinister was afoot. She’d waited until her father was asleep and had the carriage brought around, urging the driver to quickly take her to the police station in town so that she could make a report.

Reginald Mantle, the officer who greeted her at the candlelit desk, seemed convinced as soon as he heard her name that her sister and the gardener’s boy had simply run off together. Elizabeth disagreed—she knew that something terrible had happened to Polly—and so Officer Mantle had kindly referred her to the station’s only consultant.

When her coach pulled up outside of the little townhouse, just a few blocks away from the city’s center, Elizabeth couldn’t help staring up at the windows. Surrounded by properties painted cheerful tones of white and buttercream, with carefully tended gardens, the address that Officer Mantle had given her seemed more like a distasteful ruse than anything. The property was neglected, with overgrown shrubbery threatening to take over the front steps, and the paint was peeling off the walls. Every window of the house was uncovered, save for a third floor room where cream curtains billowed out into the mid-afternoon air. It was still early spring, and the weather was quite cold for the season. Elizabeth wondered what sort of person this Forsythe Pendleton Jones III could be, taking in the state of his house.

She took hold of her skirts in one hand, lifting them so that she could climb the steps. Raising her other gloved fist, she knocked firmly at the door.

Elizabeth was surprised when the door opened swiftly inward, as if someone had been standing on the other side and waiting for a knock. She blinked as she took in the sight of an unkempt man with dark hair falling over his eyes, swaying unsteadily on his feet. He looked just as shocked to see her, blinking rapidly in response and squinting in the sudden harshness of the daylight from within the dim foyer.

“Who’re you?” he mumbled loudly, brows coming together in a frown.

She drew herself up, suddenly furious, knowing undoubtably that Reginald Mantle had taken her as a fool. “I am Elizabeth Cooper,” she announced, straightening her shoulders. “I have come to inquire after Forsythe Pendleton Jones. Have I mistaken the address?”

The man hiccuped and grinned, leering somewhat lewdly toward her. “Not at all, ma’am, you’ve come to the right place. Cooper, did you say? I knew a Cooper…bastard, goddamn bastard, he took—“

Before she could find out exactly what her father was meant to have taken from this man, there were footsteps on the stairs.

“Jesus Christ, dad, how many times have I told you never to answer my door?” snapped a voice, which sounded much less inebriated.

As Elizabeth looked over, she felt her face flush. A charming gentleman was rushing down the stair, his vest unbuttoned over his shirt. Raven hair fell over his eyes, but for a moment she caught a flash of the most unearthly blue turned curiously in her direction. He quickly took hold of the disheveled man who’d answered the door and ushered him into a side room, closing the door behind both of them. Elizabeth stood in the foyer anxiously, wondering if she should return to her coach or keep waiting for the handsome young stranger to return.

She hoped dearly that he was the one who was going to help her.

When the door to the side room opened, the younger man emerged and promptly closed the door behind himself. He produced a large skeleton key from the pocket of his vest and turned it in the handle, nodding once to himself in satisfaction as he heard the click of the lock.

“My apologies, miss,” he said, turning toward her. Elizabeth hoped very dearly that he was Forsythe Pendleton Jones III, as she might have invented a mystery if she’d known that doing so would give her a reason to introduce herself to him. “You were about to tell me about a burglary?” He paused at her look of incomprehension, and added, “No, strike that—a disappearance?”

Elizabeth drew in a breath. “How did you know?” she asked, shocked.

The handsome stranger raised one eyebrow. “I always know,” he said firmly, as if she should have been expecting as much.

She smiled faintly and extended one gloved hand. “Elizabeth Cooper,” she introduced herself, trying not to let her excitement show as he swept up her hand to his mouth and pressed a chaste kiss against the back of her wrist. “It’s my sister, Polly,” she said quickly, unable to hold herself back from the promise of imminent assistance. “She’s disappeared, and I think that something just awful has happened.”

He looked at her in a slightly more calculating way, his eyes traveling up and down her form like he was reading a book rather than looking at a woman. “Cooper…” he repeated faintly, like he was speaking to himself. “Not the same Coopers with hysteria in the family?” he asked, eyes meeting hers suddenly and nearly making her jump in fright.

So the rumors had gotten into town after all. She wondered if her mother was behaving in the asylum, or if the word would spread all the more quickly as she ranted and raved to all who would listen. Feeling a shameful heat bloom over her cheeks, Elizabeth glanced away. “Sadly, yes,” she made herself whisper in response.

The young man stepped forward, raising one hand to brazenly turn her face back to his. “Good. I’ve been aching to get at your mystery mansion for years. Shall we be off, then?” he said, surprising her again.

Elizabeth blinked in surprise as he quickly gathered a coat from the tree in the hall and repaired his buttons. It took him only seconds to straighten himself, and when he was done he looked quite smart. Pulling an odd hat over his hair, he gestured her onto the stoop and closed the door of the house behind himself.


	10. The Secret of the Old Attic

 

Betty was working in her family’s little bookshop. She looked up as the door of the shop chimed and a customer walked into the store. It was a boy that she recognized immediately--a dark-haired boy, who had been in her class at school ever since she could remember. They’d never spoken, but then, she’d hardly ever seen him speaking to anyone aside from Archie. He had a funny name, which the teachers always stumbled to say as they took role call. More than anything else that she already knew about him, though, Betty couldn’t ignore his family’s reputation around town. 

 

She knew from conversations that her parents had late at night that the Jones family was trouble. They were from the other side of town, and the father of the family had often stood with the mother in the bread line. Lots of people stood in the bread line, but rarely did both parents in a family waste their time doing it. You hardly got enough bread for one person, let alone enough to share with everyone. Betty’s dad said that it was because Mr. Jones was a drunk, and he’d kill himself one day with the stuff he brewed in his bathtub. 

 

So she regarded her classmate skeptically as he entered her bookstore, wondering what he could have possibly wanted. Betty realized suddenly that his family probably didn’t have enough pocket money for books, if they were sharing old crusts of bread. Should she follow him around to make sure he wasn’t going to steal anything?

 

Before she could move from her place behind the desk, he walked quietly over to her. His head was lowered, like he was watching his shoes while he walked, and dark hair was falling over his eyes in bad need of a cut. Betty didn’t realize that she’d been holding her breath as he approached the desk. When he raised his head and met her eyes, she let out a long sigh of relief. Her mother always said that you could tell a lot about a person if you looked them straight in the eyes, and when Betty looked at him, all she could see was something <i>good</i>. She knew that he wasn’t here to cause any trouble.

 

“Hey,” she said first, since she thought he might be shy. “You’re Archie’s friend, right? Why did you come in here?” It wasn’t meant to be rude, but middle school students are hardly renowned for their tact.

 

“I was wondering if you had a book,” he said softly. His voice was so quiet, Betty had to lean forward a little bit when he spoke. “It’s kind of famous, I guess.”

 

She pointed to a rack. “That’s where we keep all the really famous ones,” she said, frowning a little in confusion. “But my mother says that most these books are written by famous people, anyway.”

 

He shook his head. “This book wasn’t written by anybody,” he said.

 

Betty blinked in surprise. “All books have to be written by somebody.”

 

“Not if they don’t put their name on it.”

 

She tried to remember if she had ever seen a book without a name on it, but in her limited shopkeeping career Betty had yet to note such an unusual volume. Realizing that she would need to call Polly even though the radio was playing  _ The Happiness Boys _ , she bit her lip. Polly hated getting interrupted when it was Betty’s turn to mind the shop. Still, there was nothing else she could do to help this boy.

 

“Let me check,” Betty said. She was going to add,  _ I’ll be right back _ , but then she thought better of it and added, “Follow me.”

 

The boy looked surprised, but he dutifully followed Betty to the back door of the shop, which lead into her family’s home. Polly was curled up in the wing-back chair next to the radio, her ear turned toward the speaker. When she saw Betty, she scowled.

 

“Do you know if we have a book without an author?” Betty asked quickly, trying to get it over with and minimize her sister’s irritation.

 

Polly rolled her eyes. “Of  _ course _ , it’s up front.  _ The Immutable Truth _ . The author was  _ Anonymous _ .”

 

Though she hated the way that Polly spoke to her lately as if she were an idiot, Betty nodded her thanks and spun on her heel. She marched straight past the bewildered boy and went to the front of the shop, her eyes scanning the covers until she found it.  _ The Immutable Truth _ . 

 

Plucking it from the shelf, she held it out to the boy. “What do you want with this, anyway?”

 

He was looking down at the book in his hands, his fingers tracing the golden letters on the cover, not paying any attention to the way she braced her hands on her hips or tilted her head at him. Opening the front cover like he was holding something sacred, she could see his eyes skimming back and forth while his mouth moved silently to echo the words on the page. 

 

Betty cleared her throat a little, and he looked up like he’d been caught doing something naughty. A little blush covered his cheeks, and he said, “My grandpa wrote it, I guess.”

 

She looked at the cover page, upside-down. “But you said nobody wrote it,” she corrected.

 

A little smile tugged at his lips. “My dad says they stole it from him, so they wouldn’t have to send him any of the money. Dad says--” he stopped, looking at her suddenly as if she were going to spread this information around the whole town, his lips clamping firmly together.

 

Betty put her hands on the top of the book, gently, and looked him straight in the eyes. “It seems like this belongs to you, then,” she said, keeping her voice down so that Polly wouldn’t hear. She pushed it toward him a little. “Just don’t tell anyone where you got it, and you have to let me read it after you.”

 

He smiled completely, then, and straightened a little. “Of course, Betty,” he promised. Tucking the book carefully under his jacket, he flicked his head to one side to readjust the hair over his eyes. 

 

That was almost five years ago, and Betty Cooper had grown up since then. She’d gotten to be great friends with Forsythe, though he always liked people to call him Jughead instead. Since he almost never spoke in class, it was like a secret name that only Betty and Archie knew. Most people at school--well, most of the guys anyway--called him nothing but  _ the shadow _ . It made Betty curl her hands into fists when they teased him and pushed him around in the hall, but usually the teachers were there to stop it. And when Archie was around them, no one dared to do anything to bother Jughead. By the time they reached High School, they were practically inseparable.

 

Betty’s parents disapproved of her spending time with Jughead and Archie, of course, because neither one was from a particularly respectable family. So when she heard a few stones on her window late one Friday night, Betty knew immediately that one of the two boys needed to speak with her. Luckily she hadn’t gotten ready for bed, yet. She opened the window and looked down, smiling as she picked out Jughead’s familiar shape from the shadows. 

 

“Can you come down?” he called, trying to keep his voice muted so that her parents wouldn’t hear. 

 

Betty glanced over her shoulder. Her mother was playing a record downstairs, and her father was probably reading. No one would notice if she went quietly down the back stair. She nodded to Jughead before closing the window and sneaking silently out of the house.

 

When she got outside, he grabbed her arm and said a little breathlessly, “Betty--my grandparents’ house. They moved out. It’s  _ empty _ .”

 

She didn’t understand why he was so excited, of course. “What does that mean?” she asked, frowning.

 

Jughead placed one hand on each of her cheeks and looked her dead in the eyes. “It  _ means _ that we can go inside and see if there’s anything left that belongs to my family.”

 

She smiled, unable to stop herself. “Really?” Betty asked, knowing how much his grandparents meant to him. “Oh--hold on, Jug--” she turned and dashed back inside the door, grabbing the flashlight off the shelf of the mud room wall. “Let’s go, before anyone knows we’re gone.”

 

He nodded and fell into place at her side, jogging a little to keep up with her quick step. Nevermind that young ladies weren’t supposed to be unescorted at night with young men--if Nancy Drew could do this sort of thing in her adventures, then Betty could too.

 

The house stood three blocks outside of the city’s center, but really only a short walk from Betty’s home. The rumor was that Jughead’s grandfather had been a drunk, just like his dad, and he’d lost the house gambling at the old tavern before the government had shut it down. Ever since then, the Sanders family had lived where the Jones family originally built their foothold. But May Sanders had been married last spring, and her mother was left alone in the house after her only daughter had moved out. Old Mrs. Sanders must have decided to stay with May and her new husband in his new mansion up the way.

 

Jughead was right--the house was completely empty, and dark, when they got there. Betty didn’t waste any time in darting around the house for the yard, trying to make sure that no one saw them loitering around the property. Jughead followed right behind her, and Betty had the fleeting thought that he was like her very own Ned Nickerson--his name even had the same alliteration, if you used his nickname--but then she shook the thought away in embarrassment. Nancy and Ned were boyfriend and girlfriend. Betty and Jughead were definitely  _ not _ like that.

 

She tried the back door and found that it was left unlocked. That was hardly surprising--there was barely any crime in their town, after all. Jughead’s dad was about the worst criminal they had, and all he did was brew smelly alcoholic drinks in their little apartment. Looking up at her friend with a smile, she gestured for him to go inside first. 

 

Jughead looked around the empty house cautiously, like he wasn’t sure if someone might be there after all. Leaning forward and putting her hand on his shoulder so that she didn’t scare him, Betty said, “This stuff all belongs to the Sanders. If there’s anything here from your grandfather, it will be tucked away in storage, right?”

 

He nodded, the corner of his mouth rising. “You reading more of those mystery books, Betts?”

 

She slapped his shoulder a little so that he’d stop teasing her, but she could see the way he was laughing as his silhouette shook. Walking with more purpose, she found the stairs. Betty climbed the house until she found the little cutout in the ceiling for the attic stairs, turning to look at Jughead with her hands on her hips.

 

He stepped toward her and reached up to grab the string. In that instant, she realized how close they were. Betty took a quick step back, placing the usual amount of personal space between them.

 

When the ladder slid down to touch the ground, Jughead stepped around and held it for her. “Ladies first,” he said, nodding toward the flashlight in her hand. Betty clicked it on, raised her chin, and climbed up the old rungs. As soon as her head was clear of the attic floor, she slowly rotated the beam of the flashlight to see what was there.

 

She looked over her shoulder at Jughead. Though he was pointedly looking away to avoid peeping up her skirt accidentally, she saw his head rise as she said, “Jug--there is a  _ ton _ of old stuff up here.”

 

“Really?” he asked, shifting. Betty climbed the rest of the way up, kneeling next to the hole and tucking her shirt under her knees. 

 

“Come up and see,” she called. Jughead didn’t need to be told twice--he was up the ladder in an instant, peering around at all the old things that used to belong to his family.

 

Betty saw an old dress form, a myriad of wooden crates, some very old toys, and all sorts of things that had been put there and forgotten. She peered under the lid of one box and found a treasure trove of fine china--and carefully folded quilts in another--and another full of old books with dusty spines, despite the wooden lid of their crate. 

 

She and Jughead divided to conquer the space, quickly determining what things belonged to the Sanders family by discerning where the dustier relics were stored. As they moved further into the attic, they found older and older items. Jughead uncovered a box with a photograph inside and stared at it for a long moment, borrowing Betty’s flashlight. She looked over his shoulder and saw a couple in the photo--there was no mistaking that the man was related to Jughead, since he had the same dark hair, even though he was sporting an old-fashioned moustache and chops.

 

Finally, she opened a dusty trunk. Betty had been expecting to find personal items, of course, but she wasn’t prepared for the mass of papers that had filled the thing almost to the brim. She gestured Jughead over, already squinting at the script. 

 

When she’d given him that book, years ago, he’d gone home and read it secretly outside his house. In the course of their friendship, Betty had come to realize that Jughead often spent as much time outside his house as he could, to avoid his parents. The only real reason he kept going back there was to make sure that his baby sister was still alive. So he’d read on the stoop under the electric street lights, whenever he could get his hands on something to read. True to his word, when he finished the anonymous novel, he let Betty read it too.

 

It was a good book. She understood why it was a best seller, even years after it had been published. The book had romance and mystery, and so many lines that were beautiful to quote. Its central theme was the true purpose of human life--and the book’s answer to that question was unconditional love. The mystery in the plot served as a foil for the book’s real message, its evil villains demonstrating how empty and meaningless a life without love could be. Not just romantic love, but love for your neighbors, for the world...in Betty’s opinion, it was a beautiful thought.

 

Now, crouched in the attic of an abandoned home, squinting in the weak light, it took them only seconds to recognize the unmistakable cadance of that remarkable prose. Betty looked up at the same time as Jughead, their heads so close that they accidentally bumped noses in excitement. 

 

“It’s--”

 

“--the book!” Betty finished, grinning. “Jug--do you know what this means?” He was nodding, staring down at the pages then, like he couldn’t believe it. “This means that we can prove your grandpa wrote the book.”

 

For her first daring mystery adventure, it wasn’t a bad start. Betty and Jughead carefully carried the trunk out of the house, closing everything up behind themselves so that no one would ever know they were there. They hid the trunk in Archie’s old treehouse, until they were able to put the manuscript in order and write a letter to the publishing company. Betty wasn’t expecting to hear back quickly, but there was a response waiting for her before the end of the week on her family’s kitchen table. 

 

She carried the letter to Jughead’s apartment, waving it as she caught sight of him reading on the front stoop. They opened the letter together, devouring the contents. The letter began,  _ To Mr. Jones, if you are able to adequately prove the provenance of the manuscript… _ it continued in equally formal language.

 

“Wait-- _ royalties _ ?” Jughead said, blinking up at her. “Betty, that’s--”

 

Betty stared at the number. “That’s enough to buy two houses,” she breathed, equally shocked. 

 

Of course, the publisher warned that many people had claimed to be the author of the novel over the years. The original agent for the manuscript had long since passed away, and so he could no longer offer any clues about the novel’s origin. If Betty and Jughead would please consider bringing their findings to the publishing office…

 

Jughead grinned. “That’s not even a day’s drive,” he said in excitement. “We can take the train into town and walk there, Betty-- _ we can go tomorrow _ .”

 

She threw her arms around him, still clutching the letter in one hand. Jughead was surprised at first, but then he hugged her back. When Betty let him go, he was smiling with more happiness than she’d ever seen in him before. 

 

Maybe he would be the Ned to her Nancy one day, after all. 

  
  



	11. Troops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, I'm not a WWII expert by any means. This is cobbled together from the most quickly rendered Google searches imaginable, and my extensive knowledge of movies and books centered around this time period. As such, I apologize in advance to any historians who see glaring inaccuracies in this one.

 

The war was so vastly different than what he’d been expecting.

 

When he’d enlisted with Archie, and Reggie, and Chuck, and Moose, and all the other boys from back home, people had been singing and clapping and pinning flags to their shirts like they’d already come back from the battle, victorious. Of course, his old man was appropriately proud. Only looking back on it did he think that his father might have had a strange glimmer in his eye, like an unshed harbinger of what was to come. At least he hadn’t lied about his age to enlist, like some of the others in his company. Some of the things he’d seen so far were things he couldn’t have imagined in his worst, most twisted nightmares.

 

This wasn’t like his grandfather’s war, when men had filled trenches shoulder to shoulder, climbing over the bodies of the dead to aim their rifles through the mud at their opponents. No, this was different.

 

He was, basically, a driver in this war. He was responsible for driving the truck wherever he was told. The men that had once been his classmates would pile into the open back, and he’d drive over the foreign soil until they found a new village, and he’d park. Everyone would fall out and fall in line, marching into the town, searching for any hidden enemies, any hint of hidden _Nazis_.

 

Then he’d watch as they straggled back to the Jeep, counting them, his eyes lingering on their blood-stained clothes, waiting too long for those who weren’t going to come back.

 

So when the tour was announced, it seemed such a logical directive that he didn’t spare much thought about what could go wrong. Drive beyond their current range, strike a temporary camp, infiltrate a larger town, regroup, and retreat. Archie’s strategy was so deceptively simple, no one even questioned it. A cynic at heart, as he looked at the maps spread over their camp table, he didn’t have the courage to bring up the likely hindrances they’d encounter: bombs, enemy troops, running out of _gas_...not to mention, they would be far, far away from all of their major medical supplies. If anyone was wounded, they would have to suffer the long drive back to base to survive.

 

Archie must have seen something in his face. As the men were loading supplies into the back of the truck, and then loading themselves, the young ginger commander pulled him aside. “Jughead,” he said quietly, where no one else would hear. “We’ve swept everything within driving distance already. We have to start reaching farther.”

 

“I know, Arch,” he snapped irritably, glancing off. “I didn’t say anything. Let’s go.”

 

The look his best friend gave him said that Jughead’s face had given away more than a few words would have, but he didn’t press. Climbing into the passenger seat, he signaled into the side mirror to let the guys in the back know they were pulling out. Jughead shifted into drive and the truck trundled forward.

 

If he could go back to that moment, looking at it from his vantage point in the future, he would have said so much more to Archie. He would have presented his case so that they would stay, made everyone wait for reinforcements and more supplies. Their three-day venture became some of the most hellish days they experienced during the war--and some of the things Jughead saw during that time were things he would never, ever be able to expunge from his memory, he knew, no matter how hard he tried.

 

Like Reggie running to the side of the truck, holding his own intestines within his body, blood pouring out of his lips as he begged Jughead for help, asking if it was _bad_.

 

They hadn’t been friends at home, exactly, but Jughead wouldn’t wish that sort of fate on his worst enemy. At least when he _had_ to kill Nazis, _he_ was humane about it.

 

In the end, all he’d received from Reggie was a garbled message to relay to his mother and a lifetime of nightmares that would leave him gasping for breath and covered in a cold, clammy sweat. As the life left the eyes of his fellow soldier, Jughead realized in a panic that he’d already forgotten what Reggie had said. Months later, when he was finally home, he would say something appropriately heartfelt...but Jughead would know that the words were his own, not whatever Reggie had managed to whisper between his wet, gasping breaths.

 

They’d arrived and made camp, as planned. Before the sun had fully risen the next morning, they silently infiltrated the town, looking for any signs of hidden enemies. It would do no good to go from door to door, since everyone in the troop spoke such limited German. The locals could rarely help them, even if they were so inclined.

 

How could they know that they’d walked into the lion’s den? The children gave it away first, emerging in the morning light to play with their little toys in the streets, innocuously singing “ _Denn heute da hört uns Deutschland_ …”

 

When the locals realized that American troops were nearby, the situation rapidly shifted. It became a bloodbath...people were targeting Archie’s unit from the comfort of their own homes, and they were shooting to kill. The unsuspecting unit didn’t stand a chance...as Jughead retreated quickly, his M1 feeling unwieldy and useless in his hands, he quickly realized that he was one of the first to make it back to the truck. He immediately started the engine, preparing to leave as soon as everyone else was back.

 

Archie almost screamed, “Go!” at him, when Reggie slumped along the side of the door, his blood contrasting sharply against the standard green exterior. Jughead closed his eyes for a moment to summon his courage, opened his door, reached down to grab the body, and hauled it over his own lap. They were driving before the door was closed again, Reggie’s boots hanging out over the road, his head lip in Archie’s lap.

 

The ginger paled, involuntarily pressing himself against the back of his chair, swearing sharply at the unpleasant surprise. Jughead stared grimly ahead, navigating back to their camp. Reggie's body bled onto his legs, the warm blood soaking his fatigues, leaving the last tangible mark that Reggie would ever make upon this earth, and all Jughead could think was that it felt nightmarishly uncomfortable. In his mind, he counted the number of figures that had leaped into the back of the truck again and again...and every time, he knew undoubtably that he’d come up short. Someone, maybe more than one, had been left behind in that German village. If they weren’t already dead, he was sure that they would be soon.

 

They had a full retreat, for the time being. Archie sent for reinforcements, reporting what they’d discovered about the village so that other troops would know that the area was extremely hostile. They buried Reggie. It was Jughead who had to write a letter to his family, even though Archie signed it. Always better with gestures than words, Archie sealed Reggie’s tags in the envelope, so that at least one small part of him would make it back to Riverdale. Jughead held that little package a long time, before it was posted, closing his eyes and imagining what it would be like to stand on the streets of that little American town once more. It was thoughts like that which kept him going, after their horribly botched mission.

 

That, and the subsequent USO performance at their unit base. Jughead thought it was a stupid idea to haul the men across the countryside to listen to some insipid American performer croon romance songs at them--seeming all the more satirical when he considered how utterly out of touch those lyrics were with the experiences he’d had--but Archie insisted that it would be good for everyone’s morale.

 

The performer was good, at least. A pretty little blonde from the East coast, who sang a few popular songs that Jughead had almost completely forgotten since he’d enlisted. By the end of the night, he had to grudgingly admit that he felt a tiny bit more _human_ after listening to her...or, at least that he’d been reminded what it felt like to be an American teenager again. Archie clapped a hand on Jughead’s shoulder as men began to filter away from the stage, leaning over so that no one would overhear what he was saying.

 

“Jug, our commander asked for a volunteer to take Miss Cooper back to the air base. The men and I are going to stay here and gather a few more supplies, and the commander is sending us a few new men. We’re going to wait for you to get back before we head over to camp again.”

 

He didn’t say that Jughead needed to speak with someone who wasn’t a part of this nightmarish war, but Jughead could see it in his eyes. Even after everything that happened, Archie was still trying to take care of him. He nodded at his best friend--his commanding officer--and felt a wash of gratitude pour through his mind.

 

So it was that he ended up leaning against the side of the truck as Miss Cooper approached, carrying her little bag, the heels of her shoes clicking against the pavement as she walked. It was a day’s drive to the airbase, and then a long flight back home. But in a matter of hours, this lovely young woman would be standing at home on American ground, a lifetime away from the war, calling her boyfriend and pinning a button to her blouse in support of the troops she’d met overseas. Maybe she’d go dancing, he thought, even though he’d never particularly cared for dancing himself. It seemed like something that girls would probably like to do.

 

She smiled as she approached, like she’d smiled onstage. Jughead took her little bag and set it in the space between the driver and passenger seats, wondering if she’d noticed the slight discoloration on the side of the truck where Reggie’s body had slumped only days before. They’d washed it, of course. But memory hadn’t allowed the truck to fully return to its former state, for Jughead.

 

As he started the engine, he glanced over while she adjusted her skirt over her knees. Unable to stop himself, Jughead said, “Is that...paint?”

 

Her cheeks blushed, and if they’d been going for a drive at home he might have found it adorable. Instead, he just objectively stared at the place on her knee where what he’d thought were pantyhose had been smudged off her skin.

 

“Things are a little...tight at home,” she murmured, her voice soft. “Not everyone can afford things like pantyhose any more. I asked, when they recruited me to come here, but they couldn’t find me any.”

 

He nodded, not fully comprehending her words. Weren’t they fighting here to _protect_ people at home? She made it sound like things were just as bad there as they were here...and that filled him with dread, because it meant that the America he kept imagining he’d return to wasn’t the place he was going to find when he got there at all.

 

After they’d been driving for a few minutes, she tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and shyly said, “What’s your name, soldier?”

 

He glanced at her, then let his eyes slide back to the road. “People call me Jughead,” he commented briefly, not explaining.

 

She nodded. Nicknames weren’t uncommon amongst soldiers, and his hardly stood out. At least they weren’t calling him something ridiculous like _Apple Blossom_ or _Sweet Pea_. No misnomer for him.

 

“People call me Betty,” she replied, her lips turning up in a bit of a smile. “Are you always this quiet, Jughead, or am I making you nervous?”

 

He coughed a little as he immediately tried to choke out a response. No, she wasn’t making him nervous. He’d just been lost in his thoughts, as usual. “Sorry,” he managed, his hands tightening on the wheel. “I think I’m usually like this.”

 

She nodded briefly, looking out her window as they passed by a small farm. The headlights cast long shadows from the buildings, making it look spooky in the dark. “That’s okay,” she said. “Do you mind telling me where you’re from?”

 

“New York. Small town. Riverdale.”

 

When did he start talking like a caveman, he wondered? He used to be so eloquent. Oh, well. So the war had stolen more than just his youthful idealism.

 

Betty opened her mouth to reply when the unthinkable happened. As his mind registered the sound of gunfire, Jughead’s body sprang into action, his training and experience taking over. The wheel immediately began to pull in his hands, one of the tires going flat, and Jughead pulled over. He threw the vehicle into park and snapped, “Get down,” to Betty, objectively noticing her wide-eyed look of terror as she slid into the footwell of the passenger seat. Slipping the Colt M1911 from his side, he squinted into the limited range of the headlights and tried to will his eyes to see into the darkness beyond.

 

They were in an extremely small town, just a little cluster of houses along the road. This should have been deep within territory that the Allies had already swept clean of Nazis, but Jughead wasn’t surprised by anything any more. It was the rear passenger tire that had gone out, so Jughead focused on that side of the road, looking for any sign of whomever had shot at them.

 

He put his hand on the handle of his door, ignoring the way it trembled for a moment. They couldn’t just sit there and wait for their assailant to approach a window and finish them off. Jughead met Betty’s eyes and mouthed, _Stay down_ , before he opened the door and slid quietly into the night.

 

It was a young German soldier, no older than Jughead or Archie, who was crouching next to a shed. He wasn’t hard to find, even in the dark, because an older woman was speaking in a hushed and rapid stream of German from behind him, and he was arguing quietly with her, his eyes trained on the immobilized truck. Jughead watched them from the corner of the vehicle for a few moments, knowing that they hadn’t seen him yet--or the conversation would have been over, and the shootout would have begun.

 

Now or never, he thought to himself. In an instant, both the soldier and the woman were lying on the ground. Jughead scanned the road, looking for any other signs of trouble. But the other houses were dark, and there was no indication that anyone else was planning to attack. Carefully, he left his hiding place to check the two bodies and verify that no one was going to shoot him in the back. Jughead picked up the Garand that the German had used to take out their tire, briefly checking the scope. He wondered if it had once belonged to an American, and the soldier had taken it from their corpse in much the same manner. Returning to the truck, Jughead tossed the rifle into the back and swore as he looked at the flat tire.

 

He returned to the driver’s door to let Betty know that she could stop crouching in the footwell. She unfolded, her eyes glassy with unshed tears, and brusquely straightened her skirt. “All clear?” she asked, her eyes scanning the road.

 

Jughead nodded. “As far as I can see,” he replied. “We’re in a jam, though. We’ve got to change this tire and keep moving.”

 

Betty pushed up the sleeves of her blouse. “I’ll help,” she said, surprising Jughead immediately. At his look, she added, “I work in a munitions factory at home, Jughead. I’m not some damsel in distress...I can probably change that tire faster than you. Just cover me.”

 

He didn’t argue, his eyes still scanning the darkness beyond the headlights. It would be much safer if he was at the ready while she changed the tire, and he was practical enough to recognize that. As Betty got to work, Jughead picked up the Garand and looked down the scope, checking all the places around the houses that a wise soldier might have hidden, lingering over the windows, the recent ambush of his troop hardly forgotten.

 

She was right, she _was_ quick. Within moments, she had the tire off and the spare in place, quickly tightening down the bolts. Jughead glanced at her as she worked, noticing the way the paint was scraping off her legs as she knelt in the gravel of the road, and the place on her cheek where she accidentally smudged grease over his skin as she swiped back that lock of unruly blonde hair.

 

They were moving again in minutes, the little town and its dead far behind them. Betty and Jughead didn’t say anything for a long while, letting the miles build. Finally, he glanced at her and said, “Most girls I know at home can’t even service their own cars.”

 

Betty smiled lightly. “I’m not most girls you know,” she said coyly.

 

Jughead laughed. “No, you’re not,” he agreed wholeheartedly.

 

Was it Betty that gave him something to return to, after the war? Before she faded into the early morning light of the airbase a few hours later, she leaned over and pressed her lips against his. It was Jughead’s first kiss--he’d enlisted at home right after school, before he’d really dated any of the girls at home. Even when he was dating Ethel, all they’d done was hold hands.

 

Now, when he imagined standing on main street in Riverdale, he imagined Betty standing there with him. He wrote her letters, slowly rediscovering the writerly voice he’d developed in school, much more eloquent on paper than he’d ever been in conversation. And _she wrote him back_ , her words always exactly what he needed to hear, just the perfect mix of affection and glimpses of home to keep him going, to calm his mind when he woke in the middle of the night after dreaming of blood pouring from the mouths of his fellow soldiers.

  
Archie jokingly called her Jughead’s future wife, noticing immediately the way that his best friend brightened whenever a new letter made its way to their camp. And despite all the horror that Jughead returned home carrying after the war, that was exactly what Betty became. _His wife_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would Betty be a Rosie the Riveter type? Absolutely. Did women in WWII paint their legs so that it looked like they were wearing nylons? Yes, that's just weird history. And I can totally see Archie with his black circle/red circle business being the over-eager commander of a troop...
> 
> Let me know what you think of this period piece! I love Bughead through the centuries...it's fun. :)


	12. Love and Peace

Betty looked uncertainly up and down the street as she walked out of the bus station. She was absolutely  _ certain _ that Polly had come here. She’d found her sister’s  _ diary _ , after all. Whether or not she’d be disappointing her mother, Betty just had to come to the West coast and make sure that her sister was all right. 

 

But she hadn’t been expecting that San Francisco would be so much  _ larger _ than Riverdale. Sure, Betty had been to New York a few times with her parents. But they’d always had a specific destination, she was realizing, and so the city had seemed much more navigable than San Francisco seemed now. Betty was utterly overwhelmed by the number of people pushing their way along the sidewalk--and the  _ people themselves _ were overwhelming, too.

 

Everywhere she looked, she was assailed by bright colors and bold patterns. This was a far cry from the modest knit cream blouse and baby-blue knee-length skirt that Betty was wearing. Girls were walking around half-naked,  _ men _ were walking around half-naked, and she felt like everywhere she looked there was something to blush about.

 

Feeling dizzyingly overwhelmed, Betty ducked into the first record shop she saw, trying to reorient herself so that she could start searching. She  _ knew _ Polly was here somewhere. Until a few moments ago, she’d been certain that she would find her sister in no time at all. Now, faced with the drastically different landscape of the West coast, Betty was starting to doubt herself. She stared at some records, feeling her eyes start to sting, unwilling to let herself give in to despair already. Her breath kept sticking in her throat, and Betty felt suddenly like no matter how much air she breathed it wasn’t making it all the way to her lungs.

 

A smooth, deep voice over her shoulder said, “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

 

Betty glanced over her shoulder, surprised as she saw a dark-haired young man in a tan leather jacket looking at her in concern. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses that looked like John Lennon’s, even though they were inside. Betty’s eyes travelled downward, seeing the way he’d shoved both hands into the pockets of his jeans as he regarded her.

 

At home, her mother would have made her cross the street so that he couldn’t talk to her. Quite clearly, he was what their parents referred to as a  _ hippie _ . Betty swallowed, tugging the hem of her blouse to straighten it. “I’m okay. I’m just...I came here looking for my sister.”

 

He glanced around the mostly empty record shop, his eyebrows rising. “Looks like she’s not here,” he commented.

 

Betty shook her head. “No, I mean...I came to  _ San Francisco _ looking for her. And, uh...I realized, I don’t have any idea where to start.” Her voice became more and more quiet as she spoke, and his face shifted in understanding.

 

The man relaxed, leaning against the table of records, one hand smoothing over the top of the jackets. “Let me guess,” he said. “Your sister ran away from home, and then  _ you _ ran away from home trying to find her. Are you planning to  _ bring _ her home? What’s the deal, sweetheart?”

 

She wished he would stop calling her that. Every time he said it, she felt her head spinning. “Something like that,” she muttered, realizing exactly how foolish it sounded as he said it.

 

He reached out and caught her chin with the crook of his finger, tilting her head up. “Hey, now, don’t look so down, little sister. We’re  _ cool _ out here, if you catch my drift. If you’re meant to find your sister, the universe will provide. In the meantime...why don’t you loosen up and enjoy your own life, rather than throwing it away worrying about  _ hers _ ?”

 

Betty nodded, her eyes stinging again with unshed tears. She didn’t completely understand what he was saying about the universe, but she got the impression that he was someone very wise. Feeling a little better, she let herself smile a bit at him and fought back the urge to cry. 

 

He grinned easily in response to her effort, his face lighting up. Betty said, “Thank you, I think you’re right. I guess...I don’t really look like I’m enjoying my life, do I?” And she realized that she was going to have to find a place to stay, with the limited amount of pocket money she’d brought along with her. It might take days or weeks to find Polly, in a city this large. 

 

Sure, she’d had the vague idea to find Polly and convince her to go to their aunt’s house, a little bit East of the city. But she didn’t need to explain that to this man, whose face was like a page from her favorite book--open, trustworthy,  _ familiar _ . 

 

She’d never believed in love at first sight, but when she looked at him, something fluttered deep within her that had never awoken when she’d shared a milkshake with Archie at home.

 

Betty didn’t want to burden him with any more of her troubles. But before she could say anything else, he nodded at her rhetorical question and took her hand. Pulling her gently toward the door of the shop, he said, “Let’s get you fixed up, sweetheart. I know a safe place you can stay, and we’ll ask around about the missing sister.”

 

He flipped the sign in the window and closed the shop behind himself, and that was the first moment that Betty realized he actually  _ worked _ there. Letting herself be pulled along, she followed him to a small apartment above a series of shops. His hand was warm and soft in hers, and he squeezed her fingers a few times as he lead her through the pedestrians on the streets.

 

They stopped in the hallway outside a door with peeling green paint, where he knocked briefly. Betty blinked as the door flew open and a short brunette girl looked up at them, her eyes bright and wide. 

 

“Oh, Jughead,” she muttered, her eyes trailing over Betty. “What sort of stray cat have you found for me to take care of, now?”

 

He smirked and shook his head. “I’ll feed her and keep her, Ronnie. I just need you to play a little dress up and ask around about her sister.”

 

The brunette girl nodded, smiling at Betty. “Come in, my square new friend, and let’s do something about your Green Acres getup.”

 

The man, that Ronnie had called  _ Jughead _ , said, “I’ll leave her in your capable hands. Betty, sweetheart, I’ve got to get back to work for a few. I’ll pick you up later and we’ll look around for that sister.”

 

After Ronnie outfitted Betty in a little floral romper which buttoned up the front, they talked about Polly and Betty tried to describe her sister as accurately as possible. Ronnie hadn’t seen her personally, but she promised to keep a look out and ask her friends. Blonde, doe-eyed girls that had run away from home seemed all too common here, from what Ronnie said as Betty described her.

 

A roar outside made Betty jump, but Ronnie just smiled and glanced at the window. “Looks like your knight in shining armor is back, B. Go get him,” she said, giving Betty a push toward the apartment door.

 

Jughead was waiting by the curb on a Triumph motorcycle, leaning over the handlebars and dangling a helmet off one hand for Betty. She hesitated--she had never,  _ ever _ been on a motorcycle before, and her parents would have a fit if they knew--but then she took the helmet and buckled it beneath her chin. Throwing one leg over the back, she slipped her arms around Jughead and held on.

 

It took them weeks of searching to find Polly. In the meantime, Jughead introduced Betty to all the charms of the West coast. True to his word, he took her in like a stray kitten. His apartment was small and modest, and the most expensive thing he owned aside from his bike was his typewriter, but Betty loved it. And, slowly, she realized that she also loved  _ him _ . He was witty, and chivalrous, and the way his hair fell over his eyes when he leaned against the windowsill to smoke a cigarette was so utterly adorable it never failed to twist something low in her stomach with desire.

 

When they finally found Polly, it was on the word of a friend of a friend who had seen her. Betty and Jughead took the motorcycle to a tent camp on the outskirts of town, where people were living in a  _ commune _ . At first, Betty wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but Jughead explained that it was like a sort of cult. She was filled with dread as she came to understand, worrying that her sister had been abducted against her will, or brainwashed.

 

What she discovered, instead, was a very pregnant Polly who had run away from home to escape their parents. She’d come to live in this commune, where everything was shared amongst everyone, and no one had to worry or want for anything. It was the exact antithesis of the consumerist lifestyle they’d been bred to perpetuate, and Betty could sort of understand its appeal for her sister. Mom and dad had always been harder on Polly than they’d been on Betty, after all. But still...Betty quickly realized that the people in the commune shared  _ everything _ , literally. 

 

“So you have no idea who the father might be?” Betty asked again, frowning.

 

Polly rolled her eyes in irritation, her hands on her swollen belly. “No, and I don’t care,” she replied again, her tone growing clipped. “You’re really disrupting my flow, here, Betty. Just go home. I’m  _ happy _ here,” she insisted.

 

Jughead put a hand on Betty’s arm. “Come on, Betts,” he said quietly, his eyes soft with sympathy. “Let’s go home.”

 

“Home?” Polly echoed, her back straightening and her eyes lighting up. “Home? Who is this, Betty? Did mom and dad send you? Do they know that you’re here?”

 

Betty was done. She’d run away from home, abandoned her life, probably gotten disowned by their parents just like Polly. And she’d done it all to save her sister from trouble that Polly wasn’t even in. In her mind, she’d thought that Polly would come away with her when she was found, that they’d both go back to Riverdale, that everything would go back to the way it always had been. But looking at the stubborn girl sitting cross-legged on the grass before her, Betty knew that things would  _ never _ go back, that she’d crossed an irreversible line when she’d gotten on that bus, and she hadn’t even realized it. She’d come to find Polly, and in actuality she’d ended up losing herself, too.

 

She glanced at Jughead and pressed her lips together. Jughead, who’d taken her in and helped her navigate the city. Jughead, whose lips were as soft as flower petals and whose hands were warm and gentle , who’d opened his heart to her just like his home the moment they’d met. Betty realized that she didn’t mind losing the old Betty, when it came down to it. She was happier with him than she’d ever been in her life.

 

Polly might be acting like she’d done something shocking and brave, but Betty had too. She raised her chin. “This is Jughead,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “My  _ boyfriend _ . And no, mom and dad didn’t send me. I’m staying with Jughead, now. So I guess, Polly, if you ever get into trouble and need some kind of help, you can look us up.”

 

With that, she turned and marched away from her transformed sister, leading Jughead back to the bike. He didn’t say anything about her little speech as she walked, kicking the Triumph into gear and heading back for the main road. A short drive later, he parked in the alley behind the apartment building. Betty unclipped her helmet and slipped off the bike, already missing the warmth of his body in her arms. 

 

Jughead slipped his hands around her waist, pulling her toward him. “Your  _ boyfriend _ ?” he asked, his voice low, his eyes darkened with desire. “Is that what you want me to be, Betty?”

 

She reached up and tucked a lock of his hair aside, looking into his deep blue eyes and feeling a sense of peace flow through herself as she made her resolution. “Not just that,” she whispered, her voice quiet. “Make love to me, Juggie.”

 

He didn’t need to be asked twice. Scooping her easily into his arms, he carried her upstairs. Polly might have found her true calling, but Betty had found her  _ soulmate _ .

  
  



	13. Zinester

Betty was preparing to close up for the night, collecting the piles of documents that she would need to shred from the desk of her cubicle and walking toward the back of the office. Half the lights were off, and the windows were glowing with the faint light from the streetlamps of the city outside. As far as she knew, she was in the building alone.

 

Until she reached the copy machine.

 

She heard it before she saw the figure standing there. Its gentle hum and the click of paper rolling through the machine alerted her to its activity. A young colleague with dark hair was standing there, his back turned to the office, carefully aligning a document on the scanner.

 

Betty wondered if he thought he was alone in the office, too. Carefully, trying not to scare him, she said, “Hello?”

 

He jumped a little anyway, looking over his shoulder with a guilty expression. Betty shifted on her heels, feeling her stirrup sliding beneath the arch of her foot. She frowned at his look, wondering what on earth he was copying so late at night, obviously in what he thought was secrecy.

 

“Oh,” he said, looking back at the machine. “I thought everyone had gone home. I’ll be done in just a second.”

 

“It’s okay,” She said, taking a step forward. “I wasn’t going to copy anything, anyway. Just cleaning up some trash.”

 

He blinked. “You’re dressed really well for a custodian,” he commented.

 

Betty laughed. “No, I mean, from my desk,” she corrected, seeing his flustered expression as he realized what she meant. “I think I work a few rows away from you. I’m in Human Resources.”

 

He nodded, glancing back at the copy machine. “I am, too. I’m Jones, by the way.”

 

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I get memos all the time with your name on them. I’m Cooper.”

 

Her colleague smiled lightly. “Isn’t it crazy that we work in the same room, and send each other memos all the time, but we haven’t actually met?” He took a stack of papers off the document feeder so quickly that she couldn’t see what they were. 

 

“It gets busy,” Betty agreed, knowing exactly what he meant. The only people she interacted with on a regular basis was her supervisor and her cubicle neighbors...otherwise, she was simply awash in a sea of memos. Curious, she said, “What were you copying?”

 

He glanced down at the stack in his arms, the same guilty expression crossing his face. Betty knew that there had been a few memos going out recently about conserving paper and ink, and copying only what was necessary, so it struck her as extremely odd that he was running off so many sheets so late at night. Looking back up with a little smile, he said, “I’ll tell you if you give me your phone number.”

 

Betty felt a smile tug her lips in response. He wasn’t bad looking, by any means, and it had been a long time since she’d broken up with her boyfriend. Feeling like taking a risk, she nodded and walked over to the supply table, picking up a pen. She scrawled her phone number on a scrap piece of paper, followed by  _ Betty XX _ just to be daring, and handed him the sheet.

 

Their transaction complete, he said, “It’s a zine.”

 

“A what?”

 

She raised her eyebrows as he held out a small booklet to her. It was all in black and white, with cut up pieces of paper taped down to make a sort of magazine. In the upper corner, she saw that it said  _ Issue 19, NYC, May 87.  _ “Can you keep a secret?” he asked, before she took it.

 

Betty nodded, too curious to think about it. She started to flip through the booklet, her eyes registering pieces clipped from the recent newspapers, supplemented with commentary that must have been composed by her colleague. 

 

“You’ve made 19 of these?” she asked, before she could stop herself.

 

He nodded. “It’s just my hobby. A little way of dealing with the tedium of office life.”

 

Betty glanced down at the booklet again. “It’s interesting. What do you do with them?”

 

“Sell them. Trade them. Give them away,” he said, smiling a little.

 

She shifted again, the stack of waste paper in her arms feeling heavier by the second. Handing back the zine, Betty said, “I would love to hear more about it. You’ve got my number, so give me a call some time. Maybe we can get lunch, if you want.”

 

Jones nodded, moving aside so that she could finish her original task. “Whenever you’d like,” he replied with an easy smile. “Have a good night. It was nice to finally meet you.”

 

Betty smiled back, watching as he made his way out of the office. When she got home, she couldn’t stop looking at the phone hanging next to her apartment kitchen. Would it be insane for him to call her so quickly? She brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas, pulling her hair out of her face and into a quick ponytail. As she was looping the scruncci around her hair, the phone rang and she jumped in surprise.

 

It felt like a bar of wet soap in her hands as she raised the receiver to her ear. “Hello?” Betty said, her heart hammering.

 

After a beat, a familiar voice on the other end said, “Sorry to call so late, but I realized that I didn’t tell you my first name. It’s Jughead.”

 

She smiled even though he couldn’t see her, leaning back against the wall and curling the phone cord around her hand. “Leftover from college?”

 

“Childhood, actually,” he replied, sounding used to the question. “The real thing is worse.”

 

Betty twisted the cord around one finger and said, “Thanks for telling me. I might have stayed up all night wondering. I thought you looked like a Patrick.”

 

He laughed on the other end. “Well, I was going to stay up all night wondering if those X’s on your note were supposed to be kisses, so that would have been fair.”

 

Her heart skipped a beat, fingers freezing in their relentless fidgeting with the cord. Caught in her own brazen act, her voice hardly more than a whisper, she said, “I think they could have been, if you wanted them to be.”

 

There was a maddening moment of silence. Then he said, “I might have preferred the real thing.”

 

An unstoppable smile spread over her face, her spirit soaring at those words. Feeling confident about his reciprocal feelings, she said, “Take me to lunch tomorrow and maybe they will be, Juggie.”

 

“Until tomorrow then, Betty,” he said, emphasizing her name, and she could have sworn that she heard a smile in his voice, too. “My treat.”

  
  



	14. Floating in a Tin Can

It was the first time that Jughead Jones went off-world. If he carried out his plan, it was going to be the last. He’d had enough of it, being pinned as the scapegoat for the problems in his hometown, fighting for the right to live his own life, battling all the preconceived notions that everyone seemed to hold because of his family. Even though it took his life savings to book himself a seat on the next flight to the space station, it didn’t matter. His plans after his arrival on that distant satellite were short, and they wouldn’t cost him a material thing.

 

The flight was fairly average. He donned his standard-issued flight suit, securing the oxygen dome just in case things went badly. Rarely did things go badly, these days. It wasn’t like a hundred years ago, when shuttles blew up as they tried to leave the atmosphere. Still, all the safety precautions they had now were born from experience, so he didn’t complain.

 

When the shuttle docked, he was given the all-clear to unbuckle and make his way into the decompression chamber. Jughead waited until the lights signaled that it was okay to remove his helmet. He stripped out of the suit, leaving it for another passenger to utilize on a later flight. For him, there would be no more flights. This was it.

 

Before he did anything too drastic, Jughead decided that he would get himself a drink. One last drink, like communion before the Last Supper, he thought. He made his way through the throngs of station residents and visitors that filled the halls, eyes scanning the businesses for the universal signs of a bar. Finally, his eyes found a niche in the wall with a series of high stools before a counter, where an attractive young blonde was shaking a drink and pouring it into a martini glass for some breed of squid-like alien. 

 

Jughead didn’t discriminate. He slid into the second stool from the squid, who wrapped a tentacle-like appendage around the stem and lowered its whole mouth into the liquid, draining the glass. The bartender’s eyes slid away, and she looked briefly uncomfortable, but she brightened as she caught sight of Jughead.

 

“Pick your poison?” she asked, smiling as she slid down to stand in front of him. 

 

He couldn’t help smiling back. “Bourbon, if you have the real stuff. Straight, please.”

 

She nodded, reaching under the bar to produce a slightly dusty bottle. Pouring into a glass, she slid it in front of him. Another customer walked up and called her away momentarily. Jughead sipped the liquid, focusing on the way that it burned his mouth and throat as it slid smoothly into his stomach. The pain was bracing, real...it was times like this that he thought he might understand what had made his dad an alcoholic, when he was alive.

 

Alive. It sobered his thoughts, dragging his head down to rest on his arm, filling him with dread. Jughead let out a long sigh, his eyes memorizing the way the light was refracting through his glass. So it was that he noticed immediately when the bartender returned, his eyes rising to meet her concerned gaze.

 

“Rough day?” she asked, running a towel over the surface of the bar.

 

He snorted shortly. “Rough life,” he countered, looking away.

 

She bit her bottom lip, and it was such a sympathetic, natural,  _ human _ thing to do that he felt a twinge of something deep within his mind when he saw it. Maybe his sister had bit her lip like that, before she disappeared. He couldn’t know. But undoubtedly, it  _ did _ something to him.

 

The bartender glanced over at the squid, her eyes lingering on the empty glass. Before she moved away to pour a refill, she looked at Jughead and said, “I get off in half an hour. My name’s Betty, by the way. Let me buy you dinner and we can talk about it.”

 

His eyebrows rose a little. Certainly, when he sat down, he hadn’t been expecting that she would try to pick him up. Still, he felt like he had absolutely nothing to lose. She was admittedly attractive, and he thought that he might like to see how it felt to watch her bite her lip that way when her body was above his, drowning him in ecstacy. He hadn’t been planning on a final one night stand, but it was definitely a step above a final drink. No need to tell her that she was taking home a ghost.

 

Of course, Jughead couldn’t have known that night that Betty would softly slip her hand over his as they ate together. He didn’t know that her soft expression of sympathy and sorrow as he revealed his Earthly troubles would somehow draw his heart out of his body and into hers. It was exquisitely painful to fall in love with her, even when she took him back to her modest quarters on the upper deck of the station, even as they stripped out of their clothes to do what humanity did best. 

 

As he buried himself within her, he didn’t realize that he’d stopped thinking about his plan. He was wholly focused on worshipping her, instead. She tasted like strawberries-- _ real _ strawberries, not the sort that came out of the printer, but the kind you could sometimes still convince to grow in little pots by the window on the Earth. And when her lip slid between her teeth as she lowered herself slowly over him, her body rising and falling in a deliberately slow pace that felt delectably  _ good _ , he found himself quickly unable to resist the catharsis of his release. She leaned over as he filled her, blonde hair falling around their faces like a shroud, and she pressed her lips against his forehead. 

 

Lying on his side in her bed after they’d both cleaned themselves in her molecular vacuum stall, he watched her pull a large knit sweater over her head. It was big enough to fall to her mid-thigh, looking more like a dress than a shirt. A smile tugged his lips as she started to climb onto the bed with him, his hands automatically rising to slide up her smooth legs and over the bare curve of her ass. 

 

“Is it terrifying if I say that I love you?” he asked, meeting her eyes. 

 

She settled herself over the top of his legs, her knees on either side of his hips. Brushing her hand over his hair, she said, “There’s an old folk story that people were originally connected at birth, and the gods became jealous and split them apart. Humanity’s life purpose is to find their other half again.” With an apologetic smile, she added, “Sorry, I studied ancient literature for years.”

 

He smiled easily. “Don’t apologize,” Jughead said, feeling his heart lighten as he looked up at her. “If that’s what you believe, I won’t judge you for it. Are you saying that you think I’m your other half? We did just meet, you know.”

 

Betty pressed her forehead against his, her eyes gazing at him steadily. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But I’d like to have some time to figure that out, if you don’t mind. I’m not usually a one night stand sort of girl, and it seems like you don’t have anything else to worry about.”

 

He swallowed over a lump in his throat that had formed as she spoke. Nodding, he pulled her against him, the fabric of her sweater slightly scratching against his chest as he rolled to his side and held her. She might not have known it that night, or even the next, but that was how Betty Cooper saved his life.

  
  



	15. Femme Fatale

The door said  _ FP Jones III, Private Detective _ in block letters that cast a shadow across his desk when he killed the lights of his office to work in the glaring illumination of the streetlights. He thought it was particularly poignant that his father’s nickname sometimes wrote itself in shadow across his forehead or his arm, like a metaphorical reminder of where he’d come from, unable to be forgotten or ignored. Every time he reached for the glass of whiskey next to his typewriter, the shadow would slide over that, too. It was too damn symbolic for his taste.

 

His partner, Archibald Andrews, had gotten the desk closest to the windows. They’d played cards for it, and once the final hand was laid down there was no taking it back. He’d always been lousy at cards, and Andrews knew it. The desk had been his before they’d started to shuffle.

 

Oh, well. No use crying over bad cards, he thought to himself. Maybe he should start learning how to cheat--but he’d always been too straight for that. Jones was nothing but honest, to a fault.

 

When the door of the office swung unexpectedly inward on a late Friday evening, he started to reconsider his luck. Maybe it was providence that he’d lost Andrews’ desk after all. In their office, it was ‘first see, first serve’, and Jones definitely saw her first. She was a pretty little blonde, exactly his type, with a body that looked poured into the little black dress she was wearing. Her lips matched her heels, and Jones was a hack investigator if he thought for a second that she hadn’t purposely designed her ensemble that way. The red jumped away from her pale skin like a neon sign, drawing his eyes from her face to her feet in an instant. Her blonde hair fell in gentle waves over her shoulders, falling just so that he could see the elegant curve of her neck. When she looked at him from beneath her lowered eyelashes, all doe-eyed and distressed, he knew immediately that she already had him wrapped around her manicured little finger.

 

His heart was beating a staccato in his chest, hammering like a machine gun. With a lick of her lips, she said, “Is this the office of Jones and Andrews? I’m hoping one of you can help me.”

 

Jones was on his feet in an instant, around his desk, the siren song of her honey-sweet voice drawing him relentlessly to her. From the corner of his eye, he saw Andrews laugh to himself and pull his hat down over his eyes, propping his feet up on the edge of his desk. He’d been knee-deep in a dame named Veronica Lodge all week, Jones remembered. It was just as well, because he didn’t enjoy disagreeing with his partner over women. 

 

Then his attention was all for her, as he held out a hand and led her to gracefully perch upon a chair. “You’re in the right place, doll,” he said, leaning back against his desk once he’d seen her settled. “FP Jones III, private detective, at your service. How can I help you, miss…?”

 

She sniffed, her great eyes filling with tears. “Betty,” she said, opening her little black purse and drawing out a white handkerchief to dab below her eyes. “Betty Cooper, Mister Jones. But for you, it can be just Betty.”

 

There was nothing he hated more than seeing a woman cry. She didn’t need to reel him in any further, but she was going to make damn sure she had him, it seemed. Now to figure out what had her knocking at his door. “Alright,  _ just Betty _ , tell me what’s happening.”

 

She shakily drew a cigarette out of her purse, looking up at him through her lashes. “Do you have a light, Mister Jones?” she asked sweetly, her voice trembling. His hand darted into his jacket in an instant, flipping over the top of his lighter, waiting patiently as she drew the flames into the cigarette between her pouting red lips. They left an imprint on the end of the cigarette, he noticed, after she moved it away from her mouth to exhale. She put on a show of gathering her courage before she met his eyes again. “It’s my sister,” she said at last. “My sister’s fiance has disappeared.”

 

Her story shared at last, he regarded her skeptically. “Why isn’t your sister knocking on my door, then, Betty?”

 

Her brows drew together in confusion, and she drew another breath through her cigarette, letting the smoke curl out of her lips in a tiny stream that dissipated just over her head. “I’m very close with my sister,” she explained. “She’s not the sort of girl that would think the worst, but I never liked her fiance. If he’s run away, I need some real proof to show her what sort of man he is. You see, Mister Jones, she’s having his baby.”

 

So that was the trouble, he thought, and why it was her problem. And since she’d come into his office, it was his problem now, too. “Don’t worry about it, doll. I’ll take care of everything. Just tell me what you know about this fiancé.”

 

——

 

The investigation was slow going, at first. No one knew anything about Jason Blossom, or anyone matching his distinctive description. It helped that the man had a head of hair redder than Andrews’, but even that characteristic hadn’t made him turn up anywhere within a ten-mile radius of the heart of the city. Jones kept hitting one dead end after another, and it was starting to feel as if Blossom had disappeared off the face of the Earth. 

 

He met with Betty again to give her an update. This time, she asked him to meet her in the little Italian place downtown with the top-notch marinara. Jones never turned down an offer to talk over a meal, so he was there at a quarter to seven looking as sharp as ever in his second-best suit and his best fedora. Betty ate sparingly, picking at her food, seemingly focused on discussing the case rather than her dinner. Jones noticed, though, and thought to himself that there were only two reasons why a person tended to pass up a perfectly good meal: one, they were depressed, or two, they were keeping a secret. He categorized Betty in the latter group, based on the way her eyes shifted whenever he asked her about Blossom’s last known whereabouts. She knew something more than she was telling him, and it was either guilt or fear that was keeping her from telling him.

 

To solve that mystery, he needed to earn her trust. So when she invited him up to her apartment for a night cap, he accepted without hesitation. He leaned back against her prim little sofa while she fixed him a drink, looking around her personal space and noting the details. Betty pressed a glass of whiskey on the rocks into his hand, settling herself on the wing-backed chair that sat kitty-corner to her couch, sipping daintily at a glass of red wine. Her lipstick left a red half-moon along the rim, and Jones fleetingly found himself wondering what she would look like if he kissed her until that alluring mouth was clean. He sipped the whiskey briefly, feeling the heat of it sear through his chest, and continued to quietly observe her.

 

She didn’t surprise him when she murmured, “So, do you have a girlfriend, Mister Jones?” He’d known that was her game before she’d even suggested leaving the restaurant. 

 

With a calm smile, he shook his head briefly. “No. And you can call me Jughead, doll. Hearing you say Mister Jones makes me keep thinking of my old man.”

 

Her eyebrow quirked at his nickname and she quietly sipped her wine again, lips curling into a smile. “Well, I just wanted to thank you for all the help you’ve given me. I know we haven’t gotten an answer, yet, but just knowing that someone is working on it helps me sleep at night.”

 

“Always happy to help you sleep at night,” he replied smoothly, unable to hide a cat-like grin. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to assist you with that.”

 

She rose from her seat, setting her wine on the side table, and slid onto the couch next to him. Her dress rode up her thigh, just enough that he could see the top of her pantyhose and one of her garter clips. Betty reached out and ran her hand over his chest, her fingers toying with his tie, and she purred, “I can think of a few things.”

 

He took that as a sign and slipped his hand over her hip, drawing her dress up even farther. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against hers. The kiss was electric, something jumping between them like a currant as she tilted her head and parted her lips, her tongue sweetly brushing against his. He dug his fingers into her side, drawing her onto his lap, and Betty moaned against his mouth in a way that he found utterly irresistible. Like he’d known he eventually would from the moment he saw her step into his office, he lifted her easily and carried her to bed.

 

\------

 

A week later, he was peering through the blinds of his own office with his pistol in his hand, watching the street for any signs of Hal Cooper. Glaring over his shoulder at Betty, he snapped, “You knew? From the beginning? And you set me up anyway? Sent me in without so much as a warning, like a horse to a glue factory?”

 

Tears swam in her eyes. She wrapped her hands around his upper arm, pressing her body against his, and said, “I didn’t think you would help me, Juggie. I thought, if you knew about the murders, you’d say that it was a job for the police. And I didn’t  _ want _ the police involved, because I don’t want daddy in jail. Not until I understand why.”

 

He should have known this woman was too good to be true. Hadn’t he learned anything from Andrews over the years? Women meant trouble, and Jones swore to himself that he wasn’t going to let a pretty blonde confound him so thoroughly that he missed the truth ever again. It hurt all the worse, knowing that she’d lied to him, since he’d been starting to think that the thing between them was something more than a fling. He’d started looking forward to making her laugh, to watching her as she was watching him, to sharing his bed with her whenever they had the chance. If only she hadn’t  _ lied _ to him, he was starting to feel like maybe this woman just might have been the one.

 

He was wrenched from his thoughts as he saw a figure step out of the mist, illuminated by the harsh glare of the streetlight. It was undoubtedly Hal, his collar turned up, his hat pulled down, and a pistol clutched against his chest. Betty gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. Jones didn’t spare her a glance, but carefully drew back from the blinds.

 

“He’s tying up the loose ends, now,” he told her plainly, not bothering to sugarcoat the truth. “You might be his favorite daughter, but he won’t be willing to risk this getting out. From now on, you do  _ exactly _ what I say, and we might just make it out of this thing alive.”

 

She nodded, her hands still pressed against her mouth in terror, her green eyes following the figure’s progress as it approached the building. Jones swore briefly, grabbing her hand and pulling her away from the window. He drew her back into the stairwell of the building, heading for the roof.

 

The wind was whipping across the city. As they stepped out of the stairwell, Betty’s scarf flew away from her neck and danced over the street, plunging away into the night. She gasped, but it happened too quickly for either of them to grab it.

 

“Make sure you scream,” he told her, moments before the door burst open. Twisting Betty in his arms, Jones caught her wrists in one hand and yanked them up behind her back. With his other hand, he angled his pistol below her chin. As Hal emerged, the wind knocked the hat away from his head. He stared wildly at the scene before him, taken by surprise.

 

Jones gave her arms a little jerk and she obediently screamed, lurching forward and struggling as if she were trying to get away from him. Hal lowered his gun momentarily, caught, instinctually starting forward like he was going to help his little girl. 

 

“It’s over,” Jones called to the older man. “I know it was you, Hal. I’ve got witnesses that put you near all the victims, I’ve got your schedule, and I found your little graveyard. The only thing I don’t know yet is why you did it.”

 

The older man levelled his gun toward them, his eyes flashing. “Then you know too much, already. Now that you told Betty, I’ll have to silence you both.”

 

Jones adjusted his gun, making her whimper in his arms. Hal’s face flinched again, just as he expected. “You can kill us if you want, but I already sent all of my evidence to the police. It’s just a matter of time before you’re arrested, Hal. You’re cooked.”

 

His eyes darted wildly toward the stairs, but Jones shoved Betty forward again. She stumbled a little in her heels, crying out, “Daddy!”

 

Hal’s full attention shifted back to them, and Jones said, “Answer my question, or Betty gets it. We’re using the same pistol, Hal. With all the other evidence they have on you, everyone will believe that you did it.”

 

It was over, and the older man knew it. He looked like he deflated for a moment, his shoulders lowering, his head bowing, his entire posture conveying the resignation of a man condemned. Meeting Jones’ eyes, he said, “Fine, I’ll tell you. Just...don’t hurt Betty.”

 

He wasn’t going to let her go and make himself a target, though. Nodding, Jones didn’t move, keeping his gun angled up at the woman he’d been falling in love with until that very night. “Tell me the truth, Hal, or I swear--”

 

“Okay, okay,” he interrupted, dropping his gun so that it landed halfway between them. He’d truly given up. “I always hated the Blossoms, ever since I found out as a kid that old man Blossom murdered my grandpappy in cold blood. When Polly told me what Jason had  _ done _ to her, I couldn’t believe it. I can’t remember ever feeling so much hatred for one person in my life. I got my pistol, called him outside, and put him down.

 

“I’ve killed before, of course. About once a year, whenever there’s a particularly bad  _ sinner _ that comes into our lives. So I knew how to take care of the body. I told the girls that Jason had gone home, and I expected that would be the end of it. Then, I just needed to find Polly a doctor that would be willing to clean that Blossom spawn out of her.”

 

Betty jerked in his arms, like the words had physically hit her. Jones felt her slump suddenly, and hoped that she wasn’t going to faint. She was getting the answers she’d wanted, but Jones thought she might be realizing at the same time that ignorance is sometimes easier than knowledge. Her body shook, and he didn’t need to look at her face to know that she was crying.

 

“How could you?” she asked, the words faint at first. They grew in force as she repeated, “How could you?”

 

Hal reacted like she’d slapped him, turning away and shoving his hands into his pockets. Betty broke away from Jones, turning her body out of his arms, and marched forward. She leaned down to scoop her father’s pistol off the roof as she walked, not breaking her stride, and she angled it toward him. Jones started forward to stop her, reaching out, but he knew that he would never reach her in time.

 

“Polly was  _ happy _ ,” she spat, great tears rolling down her face. “How  _ dare _ you do this to her? To us?”

 

She squeezed her eyes closed as she pulled the trigger. Luckily for all of them, that meant that she missed. The bullet sank into the wall of the stairwell over Hal’s shoulder, just as he dropped to his knees. Jones reached her before she could fire again, closing his hands around her wrists more gently than before, lifting the pistol carefully out of her grasp. Betty folded into his arms, burying herself against his chest, her whole body shaking as she sobbed. 

 

Jones absently ran a hand over the back of her head, smoothing her hair, and looked down at Hal with a furious expression. All that he said was, “I wouldn’t have missed.”

 

He took Betty and both guns back into the stairwell, away from Hal and the awful scene they’d just experienced. Sirens echoed in the distance, singing their way through the city, drawing closer and closer to the site where a serial killer had been caught by a private detective. Jones tossed the pistols onto his desk and turned to Betty, drawing his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbing the tears off her cheeks.

 

When she met his eyes, she melted. “Oh, Juggie...I’m so  _ sorry _ ,” she sobbed, stepping forward and falling into his arms.

 

He ran his fingers through her hair and quietly shushed her. “It’s okay now, Betty. It’s over. I’ve got you.”

 

The unwitting femme fatale turned her doe-eyes back up to him, her hand splayed over his chest. “Always, Juggie?” she asked, her voice trembling.

 

He didn’t think twice about it. Leaning down, he urgently kissed her lips, her transgressions already forgiven.

  
  



	16. Believe

 

When they told him he’d inherited his grandparents’ house, Jughead was skeptical. Sure, he’d visited them when he was very young a couple of times, but his parents had kept him wrapped up in all their mundane drama for years and it had been more than half his lifetime since he’d seen his mother’s parents. Still, he picked up the keys and accompanying paperwork from the attorney’s office late Thursday night and bought a train ticket into the countryside. He thought he might be able to catch an Uber when he got there, but upon arrival he realized that he was extremely wrong. Grandma and grandpa’s house was in a small American town in the middle of nowhere, and he was betting that the woman behind the window of the train ticketing booth had never even _heard_ of Uber.

 

He would have to walk. Shouldering his backpack, he started off down the road. Town was small enough, just a couple of businesses lined up along a main street. Walk more than 100 yards in either direction and “town” just fell off, leaving you in nothing but rural countryside. At least it wasn’t too hot, even though it was gently drizzling.

 

Grandma and grandpa had lived at the top of a hill, in a house surrounded by trees. He was gathering that it was often moist here, since moss seemed to be covering the natural and man-made landscape around him indiscriminately. Noting the way that fat, short mushrooms seemed to be growing in a step-like pattern along the low stone wall of the property he was walking along, Jughead didn’t realize that he had arrived on his land until the house leaped out from between the trees before him.

 

He didn’t remember it looking so overgrown when he was a child, but then, grandma and grandpa had been old. They probably stopped trimming the trees years ago, and it wasn’t like anyone was coming regularly to visit.

 

Feeling a pang of regret, he fished the key out of the little manilla envelope the attorney had given him, drawing the whole thing out of his pocket. It fell into his hand like a little chip of ice, its weight tangible, the metal somehow still cool even though he’d carried it close to his body throughout the entire trip.

 

He ascended the steps of the front porch, glancing around in search of spidered cobwebs or other unsavory wildlife. The coast seemed clear, so he fit the key into the lock on the front door and gently pushed until it swung inward.

 

The creak of the hinges echoed through the entire old house, returning to Jughead’s ears without distortion, as if to confirm that he was truly alone in this space. He remembered the front room as a warm, yellow-lit, cheerful place in his childhood memories. Seeing it now, it just looked like a collection of old furniture and knick-knacks that meant something to someone who had last decorated several decades ago. Mid-century modern pieces looked up at him, silently questioning whether or not he would restore them to their former opulence. And over everything, there was a fine layer of dust, as if it had all been untouched for a very, very long time.

 

What wasn’t dusty was the kitchen. It looked more recently updated, with a modern stand mixer still plugged into the wall next to a sturdy little toaster. Jughead hesitantly opened the fridge, wrinkling his nose at the spoiled food. Here, at least, was evidence that someone had been here until recently.

 

He quietly made his way through the rest of the house, silently checking each room, his writerly eyes noticing when it seemed that objects hadn’t been disturbed in a long while. Grandma and grandpa must have been living their final days in a small number of rooms--the kitchen, the bathroom, and the master bedroom. Otherwise, the house had been left to fall into disrepair.

 

He’d need to go back into town and pick up a few groceries if he was going to stay here for any length of time, he realized. And it might take a while to go through everything and figure out what sort of family heirlooms he needed to keep. In his mind’s eye, almost none of this was familiar. No one had been able to get a hold of his mother after they’d received the news, so he couldn’t even ask her what she thought they should keep.

 

For the time being, he thought, maybe he should just keep everything. He’d brought his laptop with him when he came here, intending to work a little bit on his next book. Maybe staying in the old house and combing through another person’s memories would give him some inspiration.

 

He came to a door at the top of the house which seemed oddly placed, covered over with the faint floral wallpaper that his grandmother had selected for the walls of this floor, situated in a space that was too small to be another room. Expecting a closet, though he couldn’t fathom why someone would paper over the door of a closet, Jughead tugged the handle until it opened.

 

He blinked at a set of wooden stairs that rose toward the apex of the roof. He wasn’t expecting to find access to the attic--a roof ladder, maybe, but not a dedicated stairway. Wondering what sort of things he might find there--expecting possibly he would come across effects left by the previous owners of the house, who had built it--he slid his phone out of his pocket and tapped until the flashlight snapped into being.

 

When he reached the top of the stairs, Jughead felt the breath catch in his throat. He slid his phone back into his pocket, forgetting to shut off the light. The room at the top of the stairs was covered from floor to ceiling in books, with a comfortable light glowing from a round window against the far wall and a single skylight. A desk sat before the window, papers strewn across the surface, covered in a thicker layer of dust than he’d noticed in the rest of the house. It seemed like no one had come here for a long time, except for a single half-empty teacup that rested on the edge of the desk, set into a little hole in the dust like it was replaced often. Whatever was inside wasn’t tea, either...he stared at it, perplexed, and then glanced around the room again.

 

This place seemed, to him, like a sort of haven. For a person like Jughead, who had always preferred reading and writing over interacting with his peers, it was perfect. He felt like it had been designed and outfitted with his personal preferences in mind, and his fingers itched to start taking those books off the shelves and investigating what sort of stories had been collected here.

 

As he decided that this would be the first place he cleaned for his own use, he heard a strange sound from downstairs. It was almost like something had tumbled down the steps, but Jughead knew that was impossible. He’d just checked every room in the house...he was utterly alone.

 

Leaving the attic library for later exploration, he went downstairs to see what had happened. Strangely, a single boot was lying at the bottom of the main stairs, flipped over so that its sole stared off at the corner of the ceiling. Jughead was absolutely positive that it wasn’t there when he’d walked through that space only a few minutes before. Feeling a little chill on the back of his neck, he picked up the boot and set it on the bottom step so that it was upright. He wondered where it had even come from.

 

\--------

 

Jughead set down a cup of fresh coffee on the edge of the attic desk the following morning, a roll of paper towels tucked under one arm and a bottle of pledge in his hand. He’d resolved to dust everything first, and then vacuum, since dusting would probably dirty the floor and he didn’t want to clean anything twice. He carefully stacked the pages in an orderly pile, collecting them from across the desk and shaking the dust away from them. Spraying the pledge, he swiped a paper towel over the surface and glanced at the black coating of grime that transferred onto it, wrinkling his nose. How long had it been since anyone was up here, anyway?

 

Once he’d amassed a small mountain of paper towel on the floor in front of the desk, and he was satisfied that no more grime was coming away when he ran a fresh towel over it, Jughead settled into the comfortable old leather chair and sipped his coffee. He looked at the top paper in the stack, his eyes narrowing as he read a couple of the words.

 

_...light court sylph, prefers honeyed mead, still cannot be trusted because she loves tricks and games…_

 

His mind ran quickly through his lexicon, hesitantly identifying some of those unfamiliar words as things he associated with the dangerous fictional realm of _fantasy_. Of course, Jughead had played Dungeons and Dragons when he was younger, being someone who enjoyed storytelling just as much as he enjoyed reading. But as a grown man, he tended to ground his writing firmly in reality, focusing on fictional realism in his crime-based mystery novels.

 

These must have been notes from an unfinished novel, he thought. Or something along those lines. His dad always said that his writing abilities hadn’t come from his side of the family. Maybe he got it from his mother’s side, he mused distractedly. Shifting another sheet from the pile, his eyes traced over the unfamiliar notes, seeing that they formed a sort of diary of fictional observations.

 

Ah, well. There was nothing to do but continue his cleaning. Jughead stretched, yawning and extending both arms as far as they would reach over his head, his eyes briefly squeezed shut. When he opened them and looked at the desk, he had the sudden urge to close them again.

 

All the papers were spread out exactly as they’d been before he cleaned, and his mountain of dirty paper towels was nowhere in sight. Jughead stared at the papers, then looked over at the window. The only rational explanation he could think of was that a draft had shifted them as he stretched. He stacked the pages again, rising from the desk and looking around the ground to see if the draft had unsettled the paper towels, too. But they were nowhere to be found, even when he looked behind the books on the lowest shelves.

 

That strange tingling chill spread over the back of his neck again, and he wondered if the house might be haunted. Jughead was a very rational individual, but as a creative thinker, he had to admit that there were things about the universe he wasn’t completely qualified to register as absolute truths. Grandma and grandpa had been involved in a car accident some miles away from the house. Was it possible that their spirits had travelled home? Was this happening because this attic was something that Jughead wasn’t meant to find?

 

He took his coffee cup downstairs, thinking. Completely wrapped up in those considerations, he didn’t realize that he was standing in a mountain of used paper towel until he tripped over it at the bottom of the stairs, catching himself on the back of the front door.

 

Gasping for breath because of the shock, he ran a hand unsteadily through his hair and stared back at the stairs. Where he would swear on his life that a pile of garbage had sat before, there was now a moderate pile of _flowers_. Huge white and yellow blooms of some variety with which he wasn’t familiar were heaped at the foot of the stairs. They were loose, plucked from their stems at the head, a few rolling toward his boots as if they’d been recently deposited there.

 

He thought of the papers on the desk upstairs, and he _wondered_.

 

\------

 

Jughead finally got his answers three days later, in the middle of the night. He was sitting at the attic desk, the only illumination in the room streaming from the screen of his laptop. The windows glowed with moonlight, casting a few shadowy branches across the floor. As it had been ever since he’d arrived, he was in the house alone.

 

The passage he was working on just didn’t sound right. Jughead absently curled a lock of hair around his fingers as he thought, his eyes moving methodically back and forth along the lines of prose on the screen.

 

He was completely engrossed in his work. That is, until he saw his cold teacup start to move across the desk by itself.

 

His attention immediately snapped to the inanimate object, all his thoughts evaporating as he wondered, _what on earth…_ The teacup lurched to a halt, as if it saw him looking at it, even though that was impossible. Jughead leaned forward, narrowing his eyes, and carefully extended one hand to pinch the handle between two fingers. Unconsciously drawing in a long breath, he lifted the cup.

 

If he didn’t know with absolute certainty that he was awake and completely sober, he would have instantly explained what he saw as a particularly strange dream. Raising the cup to his eye level, Jughead frowned in astonishment. Dangling from the opposite rim of the cup was a tiny _woman_ , no larger than the palm of his hand, her feet kicking wildly and her unearthly green eyes narrowed at him in an unmistakable glare.

 

“Put me _down_ , you burglar!” she snapped, her voice chiming like a tiny bell.

 

What was that quote, about forgetting what’s possible and the impossible becoming fact? Jughead’s mind was too jumbled to fully recall it. But as he stared at this tiny person, the only thing that he could do was accept what was happening as reality. And once he’d accepted it, the logical thing to do was respond to her obvious distress.

 

“Sorry, here,” he said, holding out his other hand. She eyed his palm dubiously, looking up at him for a long moment. Apparently reading something in his face, her demeanor changed and she let go of the cup, dropping gently into his hand. She didn’t weigh any more than a few pieces of spare change, and her tiny feet tickled his palm.

 

The tiny woman was wearing an airy pink dress that reached her mid-thighs, made of some sort of material that Jughead had never seen before. It caught the moonlight and shimmered as she moved, highlighting her tiny curves. Even though she was impossibly small, Jughead could see that she was breathtakingly beautiful. Ethereal blonde hair floated wildly around her face, a few tiny flowers tucked here and there, the tips brushing over her shoulders as she looked up at him. “You had better not try to smush me,” she said, straightening. “I’m _very_ important, and you’ll never have a moment’s peace again in your life if you do, I promise you that.”

 

Jughead smiled a little to reassure her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised.

 

She put her hands on her tiny hips and stared up at him. After a moment, she nodded. “I’ll believe you, for now. But only because you look like Gerald when you smile. Do you know what’s happened to him?” she gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “You didn’t eat his heart to steal his faces, did you?”

 

He realized immediately that she was talking about his grandpa. Unconsciously wrinkling his nose in disgust at the suggestion of cannibalizing someone in the manner she described, he shook his head. “No--I’m his grandson. He’s...passed away. I live here, now.”

 

Each statement seemed to register with her like a blow. Her shoulders slumped forward and it looked as if some of the _light_ went out of her. Hair draped around her face, which visibly darkened as she stared fiercely down at his palm. She was still for a moment, then she drew in a breath and looked back up. “I hate that he’s gone,” she admitted, and added quietly, “He used to leave me maple dew.”

 

Jughead’s mind raced for a moment, wondering what his grandfather could have possibly been leaving for this tiny creature that was called _maple dew_. Certainly not soda. He suddenly recalled the cup that he’d seen on the desk when he first entered the attic, considering its unusual contents. It had been too liquid to be syrup, but…

 

“He diluted it,” Jughead realized out loud, glancing over at the cup he’d returned to the desk. The little sprite looked up at him, not comprehending. Meeting her confused gaze, he said, “I think I can get you some.”

 

She brightened, a smile breaking hesitantly across her face. “You can?” she asked.

 

He nodded, starting to rise from the desk. “Yeah, downstairs. I think I saw some syrup in the kitchen.”

 

The little creature fell down onto his palm as he moved, unable to keep her balance on his shifting hand. Jughead immediately froze to let her regain her composure. “Gerald never carried me like this,” she said, somewhat apologetically. “He never let me see the secret of the dew.”

 

Jughead wondered if the pages of notes he’d found had been his grandpa’s observations of _her_. Saying nothing about his suspicions, he carefully made his way downstairs, trying to hold his palm as steadily as possible. The sprite settled cross-legged in the center of his hand. She threw her arms out and locked her elbows to brace herself. So they managed to make it into the kitchen, where he carefully set her on the counter before going about mixing maple syrup and water until he achieved a sort of loose consistency.

 

She eagerly leaned over the edge of the shot glass and dipped her hands into the liquid, raising them to her mouth. Taking a long drink, she looked up at him with a large, satisfied smile.

 

“This is it,” she breathed. “Oh, this is the best stuff. _Thank you_.”

 

Jughead nodded, unable to stop himself from smirking. It was hardly a magical potion, but it seemed to do the trick of sealing the bond that had begun to form between them. He watched as she drank some more, pulling over a stool and propping his cheek against one hand.

 

“What are you?” he asked, before he thought better of it.

 

The tiny woman smiled, lifting her head from the glass. “I think you mean, _who are you_ ,” she replied pointedly. He winced, chagrined, but she continued. “I am princess Elizabeth, of the light court,” she announced proudly. “My mother is Queen Alice. Alice Liddell.”

 

Something faint rustled in the back of his mind as he heard that name. Elizabeth had spoken it as if it should mean something to him, after all. He frowned, wondering why it sounded so familiar. Elizabeth took another long drink from the glass, raising her cupped hands to her lips. It occurred to him that her cheeks were steadily growing rosier, and he unconsciously moved a little closer to observe her more clearly. Just as he did, the princess hiccuped.

 

“Is that...too strong for you?” he asked, surprised. He supposed that a tiny creature getting drunk by drinking maple syrup wasn’t the most difficult thing he’d had to believe tonight.

 

She shook her head. “No,” she said, and then burst out in giggles. Elizabeth tumbled off the side of the glass, landing on her rear, and laughed even more. “Oh, it’s good,” she murmured, amidst her giggles.

 

He couldn’t help smiling too. And that incredibly strange evening was the start of something fantastic, something he wouldn’t have ever guessed would happen to him.

 

\-------

 

Betty ran quickly along the back of the bookshelf, ducking into the crack between the wall and the roofline. She shimmied her way outside, expertly grabbing the side of the roof and swinging one leg upward until she could climb on top. It was a short run to the drainpipe that lead to their underground cavern, and Betty tucked her knees up as she flew down.

 

She’d tried to protect Gerald’s house from the intruder, at first. Her magic wasn’t meant for anything more than what humans considered tricks, so she really hadn’t been able to do anything to harm him. That was lucky, because Jughead turned out to be one of the most fascinating people she’d ever met. Betty thought about him more often than she even thought about Archie, her first love, a tree sprite. She’d been disobeying her mother for centuries to see him, even though the Queen thought that he was beneath someone of Betty’s rank. But ever since Jughead had moved into the house, Archie had been the last thing on Betty’s mind. She hadn’t even seen him in three moons, and that was a much longer time than they’d ever spent apart in their lives. Betty hoped that he hadn’t been eaten by something large and fierce, but she knew that Archie could take care of himself.

 

No, her concerns were all for Jughead. There was something fascinating about the way his hair fell over his eyes as he wrote, about the way he smiled so easily when she allowed him to see her, about the conversations they had until the starlight was fading from the sky. He read her the things he was writing, which Gerald had never done. He let her ride in the brim of his hat into town, so that she could see what the humans called a _city_ , even though he said that the city they lived near was hardly a city at all.

 

When she’d let her feet touch his palm, she’d broken all the orders of her race, though he didn’t know it. But something about the way he looked at her convinced her that he had a good heart. In the moonlight, those traits always shone true. Betty hadn’t told anyone at home that she was doing anything unusual, though she’d been spending more time than ever away in the house.

 

Finally, her mother noticed. Betty had always thought her mother was the definition of beauty, with her long blonde hair that was brushed as straight and narrow as a moonbeam. She’d always used a length of ribbon to hold it away from her face. As a Queen, she was reasonable and logical, if not always fair. When Betty ducked under the iron gateway of their realm that unremarkable afternoon, she found several of her mother’s guards waiting for her.

 

“Princess Elizabeth,” said Knight Keller, stepping forward. “The Queen has issued orders that you are to be taken to the dungeons. Please, don’t fight us.”

 

She drew herself up, her heart hammering in her chest. “On what charges?” she demanded.

 

Though she’d known Knight Keller all her life, she didn’t see an ounce of sympathy in his gaze as he said, “For associating with a _human_ , in direct violation of our laws.”

 

Lifting her chin, she didn’t deny it. Something within her ignited in outrage at the idea of being separated from Jughead forever, and she knew that she would do whatever it took to convince her mother that all humans weren’t as harmful as she thought. That sweet, caring, charismatic man had convinced her of that.

 

She was lead to their prison, a series of empty cans half-buried in the soil. Perching on the single stone that lay inside, Betty watched defiantly as the knights lowered the lid before her. The glow of daylight that shone around the jagged edges where some long-ago human had opened the can was the only illumination she had, but Betty had never been afraid of the dark.

 

She didn’t need to wait long before her mother arrived. The Queen opened the lid of the can herself, sliding the rock aside that had held it in place. Betty stood, dipping into an automatic curtsy. Even if they disagreed, this was still her _mother_ , the Queen.

 

“What will I do with you?” she asked, shaking her head as she looked at her wayward daughter. “Betty, I’ve told you endlessly to stay away from the humans. They don’t understand people like you.” The Queen drew close, catching Betty’s hands in her own and lifting her up from her curtsy. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

 

Betty squared her shoulders and looked her mother in the eyes. “Jughead won’t hurt me,” she asserted. “He’s got a golden heart, mother. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

 

The Queen’s expression softened, and she reached out a hand to stroke a lock of hair away from Betty’s face. “You don’t know that,” she said sadly. “Humans will always surprise you. Just when you think you’ve sorted them out, they do something that breaks your heart.”

 

She wasn’t sure what her mother meant by that, exactly, but she had a deep certainty that Jughead would never do anything to break her heart. Shaking her head, she said, “I think you should meet him, mother. He’s wonderful. He’s--”

 

“You’re in love,” the Queen interrupted, drawing back her hand as if she might have been burned. “Betty--”

 

“No, I _love_ Archie,” she countered, feeling confused. “But you’ve never liked _him_ , either. When will you let me start living my life, mother? I’m sick of you living it for me.”

 

They stared at each other in the semi-darkness for a long moment. Finally, the Queen seemed to relent, letting out a sigh. “The harder I try to keep you, the more quickly you slip through my fingers,” she muttered. “Oh, Betty...you might not know it yet, but I can tell. You’ve never spoken about that tree sprite this way.”

 

Her mind raced, her eyes searching her mother’s face. Was she right? Betty scoured her heart, starting to realize that Archie took up only a small space inside, as he always had. Though she’d always remember her affection for him, it was undoubtedly Jughead that she woke up each morning eager to see. She’d never felt that sort of excitement about seeing Archie.

 

Before she could say anything, her mother reached into a bag at her side and drew out something small. With a melancholy expression, she held it out to Betty. “This is the last one I have,” she said, her voice tinged with regret. “You might be able to find more, if you look hard enough, but I never have. If you eat this, Betty, you can never come home again.”

 

Her mother’s eyes were filling with tears. Betty looked down at the object she’d pressed into her hand. It was a small sugar heart, with the words ‘EAT ME’ pressed into its surface. Betty looked up at her mother in confusion and said, “What will it do?”

 

The Queen glanced away. “It will make you grow. Eat it far from here, somewhere wide and open, because you’ll grow until you’re as large as a human. But Betty--be absolutely sure that this is what you want, because if you do this, you can never come back here. _I’ll never see you again_.”

 

Betty closed her fingers around the treat, frowning, and stepped closer to her mother. “That’s not true,” she argued. “You can see me any time, mother. We can visit, just like I visit Jughead now.”

 

Her mother shook her head. “No, Betty. We have laws for a reason. If I don’t uphold them, they’ll become meaningless. Words only have power as long as you let them.” She reached out and ran her hand over Betty’s hair. “Follow your heart, my beautiful girl.”

 

\--------

 

Jughead slipped his plates into the dishwasher. He straightened, running a towel over the surface of the stove to clean up the mess from his cooking. Looking over at the old clock in the hallway, he wondered distantly what was taking Betty so long today. Usually, before he’d cleaned his plate, she was climbing over the kitchen sill and demanding a cup of maple dew. He hoped nothing had happened to her. She was so _tiny_ , anyone might accidentally step on her...or she might be eaten. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he couldn’t resist slowly glancing down at the bottom of his shoes, verifying that he hadn’t crushed her himself.

 

His stiffened in the act as someone knocked at the door. Jughead wasn’t sure who it could have been at this hour, since most of his well-meaning neighbors had delivered their post-funeral, welcome-to-the-neighborhood casseroles and left him alone ever since. He’d been here for a few months now, and visitors were a rare occurrence. Distantly, he wondered if it had felt that way to his grandparents, too.

 

Jughead wiped his hands on the towel and went to open the door. As he threw it open, the last rays of the setting sun momentarily blinded him, shining all around the figure that had knocked. Before Jughead’s eyes could adjust, the person launched themselves forward and threw their arms around his neck.

 

Sputtering as a mass of blonde hair tickled his nose and filled his gaping mouth, Jughead choked out, “Betty?”

 

\---------

 

Jughead never did decide to sell the house. Instead, he created a new pseudonym and began writing a series of fantasy novels. He fixed it up, updating the wallpaper and restoring the furniture, adding a few modern details that brought the house comfortably into the current decade. Almost every room received an update--every room, except for the attic library. That, he left exactly as he’d found it.

 

Even though it had always been his favorite room in the house, he had to admit that there was another space quickly growing in importance within his heart. As he leaned against the doorframe, he couldn’t help smiling at the scene within.

 

Betty, her hair drawn into a braid that trailed over her shoulder, was quietly rocking in the old glider he’d moved here from his grandmother’s study. She was reading quietly to the swaddled bundle in the crook of her arm, pausing every once in a while to place a gentle kiss on the crown of dark hair that protruded over the soft patterned blanket. The tiny face of their infant scrunched in satisfaction, bright blue eyes drifting around the room, focusing on everything and nothing. He was awed again by how perfect their baby was, surprised every day that he had been involved in producing something so miraculous. Feeling a swell of affection flood his heart, he smiled to himself and listened to what Betty was reading.

  
“ _For you see_ ,” she said, not yet noticing Jughead standing in the doorway, “ _So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible._ ”


	17. Outbreak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little gruesome...the theme for the day was “horror”. Proceed with caution.

 

The breakdown only took 36 hours. It began in the heart of Riverdale, quickly making its way to the hospital. As soon as the doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors were infected, there was no containing the pathogen. It spread throughout the town with pep indiscriminately, its victims devouring anyone who crossed their paths, leaving a bloody trail of the maimed and infected in their wake. Within ten hours of the outbreak, the cellular networks were down.

 

Jughead, of course, realized immediately what was happening. He had spent years of his life projecting old film reels at the Twilight, and he’d seen all of George A. Romero’s classics.

 

His first priority was making sure that Betty was safe. Though she protested at first when he turned up at her parents’ house and insisted that she get on the back of his motorcycle, she ultimately relented. It was a short drive next door to warn Archie, who was already throwing survival equipment into the back of his truck with Fred. Luckily the camping gear was always handy.

 

Archie’s plan was to beeline for the Pembrooke and pick up Veronica. Jughead understood why it would be his best friend’s priority, and they chose a location to regroup at later. All three agreed that Veronica’s house at Shadow Lake seemed like a good hideaway, though they’d have to get the keys from her parents.

 

Jughead’s short ride through town to the Southside was all it took to fully convince Betty that he was right. Walking dead were everywhere, their limbs bloodied and their eyes vacant. They tried not to count the figures of their former friends and neighbors. Admittedly, Jughead swerved the bike and nearly crashed as they came across Principal Weatherbee gorging on the entrails of a very dead Miss Grundy. It was a sight that would make anyone lose their lunch, but he forced himself to recover quickly. He could feel Betty’s body starting to heave against his back, so he revved the bike faster and shot onward to Sunnyside.

 

It was a ghost town when they got there. Not a single soul in sight, living or dead. His trailer was completely empty, though he noted immediately that someone had already ransacked the closet and kitchen for supplies. Jughead checked the nightstand in his dad’s room, looking for the handgun and ammunition. Unsurprisingly, it was gone.

 

“He’s probably at the Wyrm,” Jughead said to Betty with a sigh. “We won’t last long without a weapon. We’re going to have to hope that it hasn’t been compromised yet.”

 

She nodded bravely, following him back to the motorcycle and wrapping her arms tightly around him as they sped into the thickening fog. It was more difficult to drive now that the mist had blown over from Sweetwater River. The undead appeared suddenly and without warning as they sped along, leaping out of the fog and reaching out as if they planned to pull the couple off the motorcycle. The unpleasant taste of dread filled Jughead’s mouth, twisting his stomach in knots as they eked closer to the bar.

 

There were already clear signs of a struggle when they arrived. Part of the bar was burning, flames leaping out of a first-floor window where Jughead knew a supply room had been. He spotted his dad’s bike turned almost sideways in front of the entrance, like it had been parked and abandoned in a hurry. Jughead stopped behind it, his heart thudding in his chest, wondering if they should risk going inside.

 

“Looks bad,” Betty said, her lips brushing against his ear.

 

He knew it was. Without calculating any odds, he could already tell that what waited inside was likely a bloodbath. Even if his dad had made it here, even if he had the handgun, chances were that he had fired it by now. The weapon would be useless without ammunition.

 

“Adventure Scouts,” Jughead said, partially to himself.

 

They roared across town and swerved around one macabre scene after another. As the Wyrm faded into the mist behind them, Jughead spared one last hopeful thought for his old man. He expected that his dad would put up one hell of a fight if he was cornered by any of these ghouls. In his mind, he could clearly imagine the whiskey-scented former gang leader throwing his leather-clad arms wide as he sprayed the bar with shot after shot, making sure that if he went down, he took a whole lot of them down with him.

 

Jughead drove on, grimly determined that they would leave their next stop with some sort of firearm. Betty put her hand on his arm as soon as they arrived, her gaze sympathetic. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, guessing what he’d been thinking about, but they both knew that the words were empty. With a darkening look, she added, “Let me handle Dilton.”

 

Following his girlfriend into the eerily empty headquarters of Adventure Scout troop 579, Jughead was on full alert for any signs of trouble.

 

As luck would have it, the trouble was so disruptive that there was no way they could miss it. Shouts and garbled words echoed out of the club room, slowing Betty and Jughead’s steps, clearly evidence of a fight in progress. Nudging his shoulder in front of his girlfriend, Jughead peered carefully through the door.

 

He was wholly unprepared to see Toni Topaz latched onto Dilton Doiley’s back, her hands wrapped around his throat and her face twisted with fury. “Where’s the fucking key?” She growled, shaking him. “Tell me, or so help me, I will strangle you here and now and break that door down myself.”

 

“Not—giving—them—up—“ he choked, trying to pry her hands away.

 

Not far from the pair, Sweet Pea was calmly sliding a set of brass knuckles over his fingers. He stretched his hands, starting forward, when he caught sight of Betty as Jughead in the doorway.

 

“Oh, Toni,” he said, a smile spreading over his face. “Look, you crazy little demon, I told you that Jug would be fine. He brought his northside princess, too.”

 

Jughead stepped forward, satisfied that everyone in the room was alive (for now). He rolled his eyes at Sweet Pea’s words, feeling Betty follow him into the room. “Where’s everyone else?” He asked, mentally cataloging all the familiar bikes he’d seen outside the Wyrm, along with his dad’s. It had looked like most of the old-time Serpents had gone there, first.

 

“Fangs and Blossom are just checking the perimeter on this place,” Sweet Pea said calmly, as Toni slid away from Doiley’s back. She walked quickly toward Jughead, leaving the scout leader gasping behind her. Before he could move too far, Sweet Pea moved menacingly toward him.

 

“This place is loaded with weapons,” Toni said fiercely. “Captain Hammer over here thinks he’s going to keep them all to himself.”

 

Jughead opened his mouth to reassure her but Betty beat him to it. “Oh, Dilton just thinks he’s got better chances against us than the zombies,” she said sweetly. “We just have to show him how wrong he is.” Her eyes slid over to Sweet Pea, who grinned maliciously and curled his fists.

 

Maybe it was realizing that Betty had fully sided with the Serpents, or maybe Dilton had a premonition of what sort of beating he was about to receive. Either way, Jughead saw the moment he folded.

 

Before the first hit was thrown, Dilton produced a key from a chain around his neck. He thrust it at Sweet Pea, his face darkening. “I get first pick,” he said.

 

Jughead stepped forward. “Like hell,” he countered. “Sorry, Dilton, you’re outnumbered here, and you weren’t cooperating. Looks like you get…” he quickly tallied their number, “Seventh pick.”

 

There wasn’t much he could do to protest, once Sweet Pea was holding the key. They made their way to Riverdale’s only teen-owned arsenal. Throwing open the doors, Jughead was awed by the sheer amount of firearms that Dilton had collected under the radar of the town’s law officials. It made sense in a way, though—while everyone was looking at Jughead Jones and the Southside Serpents, Dilton has amassed enough weapons to arm a militia.

 

They loaded up, filling their pockets with ammunition, strapping weapons over their backs, tucking guns into their pockets.

 

All six Serpents left the clubhouse together, piling into Sweet Pea’s truck rather than taking their more vulnerable motorcycles. Betty and Jughead took the first shift in the truck bed, firing whenever the legions of the undead lurched too close. They drove up to Shadow Lake, hoping that the outbreak would be limited to Riverdale, expecting to find signs of modern civilization as soon as they crossed the town lines.

 

Instead, Jughead was treated to the sight of a very grotesquely bloodied Hiram Lodge shambling toward the truck from the woods. Leveling a shotgun and staring down the barrel, Jughead said, “Go to hell, Hiram.” The splatter from the headshot hit the side of the truck, and Hiram’s corpse collapsed in a heap on the road.

 

Betty put her hand on his arm, her green eyes wide with concern. “If Mr. Lodge was infected, do you think Veronica…?”

 

Jughead couldn’t summon enough hope to lie to her. Instead, he looked grimly at the cab of the truck, where their friends were crowded shoulder to shoulder. To break the silence that weighed between them, he simply said, “We’ll find out soon.”

 

When they reached the Lodge lodge on Shadow Lake, there was no sign of Veronica or the Andrews men. Feeling that now-familiar twist of dread grip his gut, Jughead jumped out of the truck bed and quickly swept the perimeter of the house.

 

They camped there for three days, after convincing the others to wait for Archie and Veronica. Sweet Pea broke a window so that they could get inside the house, and Cheryl found an old radio in one of the bedrooms. That was when they heard the report.

 

_—oh god, help us. We’re getting reports now that it’s reached New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Boston—oh, oh no—it’s in DC—oh god—_

 

It freaked everyone out, including Jughead. He’d been hoping that it hadn’t spread too far yet, that this was a situation like _The Crazies_ where the government would quarantine Riverdale and eliminate the contagion. That radio report was irrefutable evidence otherwise, though. It didn’t do anything at all for their morale.

 

Toni fixated on the fact that the report (which was playing on a loop, and ended with garbled screaming that made every hair on his body stand painfully on end) hadn’t mentioned any towns too far south, or west. Whatever had happened to Archie and Veronica, they had waited long enough for them, she insisted. In the end, Jughead wrote a letter letting them know where they’d gone. As he wrote, he couldn’t help thinking that this scrap of paper might be the last thing he left behind to commemorate his life. When he signed his name, the pen moved with a sense of finality between his fingers.

 

The next morning, they were heading down the coastline, hoping to come across a corner of the country where the pathogen hadn’t spread yet. Instead, every city they came to held nothing but disappointment and horror.

 

Sometimes, the survivors they found were worse than the zombies. Riverdale’s wayward sons and daughters stuck together, though, making sense of their dystopian world, fighting side by side for survival. Jughead was just starting to think that they might be able to make a life for themselves in this post-human world when the unthinkable happened.

 

As they looted a small drugstore in a southern town in the middle of nowhere, Betty’s scream cut through the shelves, piercing straight into the center of Jughead’s heart. He moved faster than he’d known he could in that moment, like time ceased to exist. When he turned onto the next isle, he saw the love of his life kneeling next to the contorted figure of a little girl, her teeth buried in Betty’s arm.

 

He didn’t hesitate to shoot for the head. The zombie’s remains fell away, leaving Betty’s mangled arm behind as her final mark on this earthly plane of existence. Jughead was at Betty’s side in an instant, his eyes fixated on the wound.

 

Betty was crying, her teeth gritted. “It’s over, Jug,” she gasped, looking up at him from the wound. “I—I thought she was a survivor, I thought she was alone. It sounded like she was _crying_ …”

 

He shook his head, his heart sinking into his stomach. Jughead slid his arms around her, desperately kissing the side of her head, already feeling that her temperature had spiked. “I love you,” he said, the words ripped from his chest, wanting her to hear it before she was too far gone to understand.

 

Betty’s body jerked in his arms. Jughead squeezed his eyes closed, already deciding that he wasn’t going to leave her side. There was nothing left for him in a world without Betty in it.

 

Hot tears burned over his cheeks, and he didn’t care about them at all. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against hers for a final kiss.

 

He was suddenly in searing pain—the worst pain he’d known in his life. Jughead’s eyes flew open in shock. He could feel a ring of fire around his mouth where his lips had been, and he fought against the blackness that swarmed the edges of his vision as he stared into his girlfriend’s milky, vacant eyes.

 

Blood poured over her lips as she chewed, eating the flesh she’d torn off his face. Jughead’s mind quickly drained of all rational thought. Fueled by an animal instinct, he rose and lurched toward the door of the shop, where the truck waited in the fading sunlight. His stomach rumbled unpleasantly, urging him forward. At his side, Betty chewed slowly and trailed along, following him toward their next meal.


	18. Animation

 

A love story in two scenes:

 

February 14th, Betty Cooper woke up and spent more time than usual tidying her hair and brushing mascara over her eyes. She ran downstairs and grabbed a piece of toast from over her mother’s shoulder. Turning, she quickly clutched the little box she’d sealed the night before with a ribbon. Her heart hammered as she looked at it, but she’d spent too much time getting ready and she was going to be late.

 

Today was going to be a test of her courage. Maybe an even greater test than the one she’d faced the year before, when she thrust her love letter at Archie Andrews and gotten her first taste of unrequited love for her efforts. Through the heartbreak she experienced the rest of the school year, and into the summer, one figure had arisen to lift her spirits and soothe her pain. At first, it had seemed like they were just becoming closer friends. But after a few months, she found her thoughts lingering more and more fondly on Jughead Jones.

 

In fact, her heart always lightened when he came into the room. She looked forward to sitting with him at lunch, when he stole food off her plate and she pretended to mind. More often than not he walked her home, even though he lived in the other direction.

 

Betty finally had to admit to herself that she liked him, more than you were supposed to like a friend. And she thought, maybe, that he might like her the same way too. Well, she hoped he did. She’d been hoping it ever since she made her fancy homemade truffles, choosing the prettiest ones to put inside her little box. She hoped it when she tied the bow. More than anything, she hoped that this year wasn’t going to be a repeat performance of last year’s humiliation and rejection.

 

She was so nervous that she was at the school before she realized that her feet had carried her there. Betty walked straight toward Jughead’s locker, knowing that he would be tucking his coat inside and fishing out the books for his first class.

 

Before she even reached the hallway, she felt a warm blush spreading over her face. Her fingers tightened on the box.

 

Jughead looked up in surprise when she approached. He closed his locker, his brows drawing up inquisitively as he noticed her expression. “Good morning, Betty,” he said. Before she lost the nerve, she looked down at her shoes and held out the box.

 

“I made these for you,” she said, her voice emerging as hardly more than a whisper.

 

When Jughead took the box from her hands, his fingers brushed against hers. Betty looked up as the contact sent an electric thrill up her arms, her blush intensifying. Jughead smiled slightly and said, “Thanks. It looks so cute—how many of these did you make? They must have taken you forever.”

 

She looked down at her shoes again. It was natural for him to assume that she’d made treats for all of her friends, she realized. Though her voice trembled and betrayed her nerves as she replied, she made herself say, “Just one.”

 

Jughead was blushing when she worked up the courage to look at him, color spreading high over his cheeks. He simply said, “Oh,” and then, “Thank you.”

 

When Betty went to class, her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest. She just hoped she hadn’t spoiled another perfectly good friendship.

 

——-

 

Jughead glanced over at Archie, his hands braced against the counter in the Andrews’ kitchen, staring back down at the recipe as if it were written in an alien language. He looked over at his best friend a second time, the rising panic clearly painted across his face. “Archie,” he whined, “how can I ever make something that will impress _Betty_?”

 

Laughing to himself and shaking his head, Archie said, “I can’t help you, man. You should just buy something like the rest of us.”

 

He was just as repulsed by the idea now as he had been the first time Archie had suggested it. Shaking his head, he replied, “Betty always makes us delicious treats. _Makes_ them. These things _mean_ something to girls Archie, I’m telling you.”

 

With another laugh, Archie said, “Sorry, Jug, you’re on your own. Usually I would ask Betty for help, but…”

 

Jughead sighed. “That’s the definition of an exercise in futility.” He drew in a deep breath, straightened, and began to comb through the kitchen to set all the ingredients out on the counter next to the somewhat crumpled recipe. If he took this step by step, it shouldn’t be too difficult, right?

 

Unfortunately, for someone whose cooking experience was limited to boiling water, straining macaroni, and mixing powdered cheese with butter and milk, it most definitely was.

 

Jughead stared at the bowl of congealed slop in the crook of his arm. No matter how much he stirred, it just didn’t look like “slightly thick hot chocolate” in terms of consistency. Instead it looked dubiously like concrete, with little unidentified chunks rising every time he gave it a good stir. Disgusted with the results of his efforts, he dropped the entire bowl into the trash.

 

Archie made a sound and started forward, but Jughead looked over darkly and said, “I’ll buy you a new one when we pick up the chocolates.”

 

Without commenting on Jughead’s defeat, Archie rose from his chair at the kitchen table and picked up his car keys. “I’ll drive,” he offered diplomatically.

 

On March 14th, Jughead woke up before his alarm, his entire body pulsing with adrenaline. He dressed and peered at his hair in the bathroom mirror, running a comb through it in an attempt to make it lie a little more flat. He brushed his teeth once, then twice, frantically squeezing more paste onto his toothbrush. Jughead flew down the stairs and grabbed the box he’d carefully selected the night before off the counter. A few years ago, he might have felt foolish running out of Archie’s house clutching a heart-shaped box of excessively-expensive candies, but he knew now that for Betty it was _worth it_.

 

His terror had transformed slowly into awe when she presented him shyly with valentine’s candies, as he processed exactly what that meant. Was it the anticipation of telling her how he felt too that made her candies taste even more exquisite than usual?

 

The recollections flew to the back of his mind as his feet carried him down the driveway and up the neighbor’s walk. Jughead stopped short on Betty’s porch, catching his breath and tugging his clothes back into place. He glanced at his watch to verify that it wasn’t too early or too late, then knocked at the door.

 

Sounds inside indicated that her family was in the middle of their morning routine. His knock caused a flurry of activity as they shouted at one another to get the door. Wondering briefly if he should have waited until they were at school, Jughead clutched the box a little bit tighter and hoped that he was the only one that could hear his heart pounding against his ribs.

 

Finally, the door burst inward. A breathless Betty was standing there, her eyes widening as she saw him. Before she could say anything, Jughead held out the box.

 

“I wanted to make you something, but I found out that I’m a terrible cook without your help,” he blurted, the words tumbling unbidden from his mouth. His treacherous face was burning again, and his stomach dropped momentarily at the look of confusion that flashed across her countenance. Had he misunderstood what she meant, a month ago? Before he lost the courage, he added, “I like you a lot, Betty. So I got you the best ones I could find instead. I hope that’s okay.”

 

She hesitantly took the box, her eyes shining as she looked up from the scrolling letters on its lid. Quietly, she asked, “More than a friend, Jughead?”

 

He felt a rush of relief. “Oh, yes,” he said.

 

A smile full of all the lightness and warmth of the shining sun spread across her face, and she stepped forward to throw her arms around him. Jughead wasn’t expecting it. After a moment’s shock, he slid his arms around her and buried his face against her silky hair, his entire body relaxing as all his fears of the worst possible outcomes dissipated into a warm feeling of contentment.

 

For the first time that day, but certainly not the last, they held hands as they walked to school.


	19. Cooper/Jones and the Lost Civilization

Betty Cooper wasn’t used to working with others, but she was mature enough to admit that the inscriptions she’d discovered beneath the temple ruins were beyond her capacity to decipher. She swore to herself, feeling a swell of deep-rooted frustration, but it was no use. She’d have to contract an expert in ancient languages to join her expedition and put her excavation on hold until they arrived.

She checked her bag, noting the artifacts that she’d carefully stored there. Though it had been light when she’d begun the day, the sheer number of discoveries she’d made were causing the bag’s strap to dig painfully into her shoulder. At least while she was waiting, she could focus on writing up her reports of her findings thus far. Perhaps she could even ship them all back to the museum, if she worked quickly enough.

She dusted off the knees of her slacks and then clapped the dirt from her hands. The sound echoed through the ruins, reverberating back to her in confirmation of her isolation. Betty positioned her hat more snugly on her head and began to make her way back to camp.

She wired a telegram back to the university, requesting any expert in ancient translation to join her at their earliest convenience. Betty broke open her rations and ate before starting on her catalog. As she chewed, she was surprised to hear a telegram return on her receiver. Betty scrambled to open her notebook to a blank page, grabbing the pencil over her ear to mark down the Morse code and begin translating the message.

JONES EN ROUTE was all it said. She racked her brain to run through the roster of her colleagues at the university, but it seemed like fellowships were being awarded on a near-constant basis as their classes sizes grew. While Betty was abroad, one of the graduate students in the anthropology department was covering her classes. Whoever Jones was, she just hoped that he was familiar enough with symbolic alphabets to make sense of the text she’d found.

Recalling the strange markings, Betty drew the sheets of rubbings out of her bag and spread them on her camp table. She took another bite of her protein bar, chewing absently as her eyes searched for identifiable patterns in the symbols. When she was back at the university, she would have to do some research so that she didn’t end up in this situation again.

It took a week for Jones to charter a plane to the continent, and then two days for native guides to bring him to her camp in the jungle. By that time, Betty had nailed her crate of artifacts closed. When the truck parked next to her tent, she passed money to the guides in exchange for their transportation of the crate back to the airport. The young man that climbed out of the truck wasn’t what she was expecting, and she was immediately on guard.

Jones was dark-haired, wearing a white linen shirt that he’d unbuttoned over his chest in the thick humidity of the jungle. As he caught sight of Betty, a crooked smile spread over his face. He walked over and extended a hand, which she shook firmly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Cooper,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure back at school.”

She shook her head. They absolutely had not met before, because Betty would have remembered a face like his. “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she said. “I’ll fill you in on the theory of my field research as we go back to the site, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to lose any more time on this.”

Never mind that the site had sat undisturbed for hundreds of years until now. The anticipation of solving the mystery of the missing village was biting at the back of her mind, drawing her thoughts relentlessly back to the temple despite the insurmountable impediment of the translations. Now that Jones was here, she hoped to get her answers.

He nodded, running a hand through his hair. “That would be helpful,” he said, “since I read your book on the plane. I’ve been studying hieroglyphics and cuneiform for years, so I’m hoping that my expertise will be of some use.”

She gestured toward the path, not bothering to point out that his expertise had to be of use, or they’d have to send for another addition to their team. At least Jones might know someone in his field that would have the knowledge he lacked, she consoled herself.

As it turned out, he was immediately able to begin translating the text. He drew a little pack of writing tools out of his pocket, unzipping it and flipping the notepad within to a blank page. Jones crouched next to the inscriptions, occasionally running his finger over a symbol and frowning in consideration of its meaning. “Look at this,” he said, glancing up at Betty. “It’s a mixture of two symbols. One was traditionally used by the Mesopotamians, but the other comes from Mayan texts.”

Betty frowned. “Those civilizations didn’t overlap,” she observed, kneeling next to him to look at the symbols he was pointing at. “How could two unrelated written dialects make their way here?”

He shook his head, writing rapidly on his paper. “I don’t know yet, but I think you and I can figure it out. Look, there’s a symbol from jiaguwen, too. We’ve got completely different parts of the world coming together in a single text...this predates modern civilization by hundreds of years, but I haven’t seen any examples of this sort of blending until contemporary communication methods were invented.”

Betty reached out and ran a finger over some of the symbols, her frown deepening. It seemed that rather than providing the answers she sought, the text had just complicated the mystery.

There was a noise behind them. She looked over her shoulder, just in time to see the end of a blow dart angled in their direction. Launching herself sideways, she tackled the unsuspecting Jones to the ground just as the dart hit the wall where his head had been moments before.

He looked up in surprise, realizing what had happened. Betty pushed herself up and grabbed a handful of his sleeve before their assailant could attack again, dragging Jones down the passage that led further into the temple.

“Who’s shooting at us?” he asked, jogging alongside her. “You didn’t say this was going to be dangerous.” His tone wasn’t accusatory, but it held a distinct note of curiosity. At least he wasn’t a coward, she thought.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “There’s a few local tribes that don’t like what we’re doing here. We can lose them ahead in the catacombs, just make sure you step where I step.”

He nodded, slowing as Betty ducked into a low stone doorway and eked her way along the wall. She glanced over to see him obediently copying her movements, and a wash of gratitude flowed through her. Betty usually hated working with others because they slowed her down or questioned her too much, but so far Jones had trusted her implicitly and more than proven his worth. An idea began to take shape in her mind about inviting him on her expeditions from now on.

She threw out a hand as they approached the trap chamber, carefully angling her foot over the solid stones in the ground to avoid setting off the weights in the ceiling. One wrong step, and tons of stone would come crashing down on the head of any would-be thief. She’d found the remains of one such unfortunate soul when she’d excavated this chamber last week.

To his credit again, Jones literally followed in her footsteps. When they reached the other side, he saw the skeleton beneath the rocks and couldn’t hide his expression of surprise. Looking at Betty, he said, “Wow—thanks for getting us through there alive, Dr. Cooper.”

“It’s Betty,” she replied. “And don’t thank me until we’re outside, without poisonous darts in our asses.”

She was already evaluating the passages, deciding where their attackers were most likely to stage another ambush. Reaching over, she held up one finger to her lips and took Jones’ hand in hers, pulling him silently along the middle passage. With any luck, they could silently make it outside.

But it seemed that she’d used all of her luck for the day. Halfway up the hall, the unmistakable sound of flying darts began to whizz towards them. Betty pulled Jones down, let go of his hand, and sharply commanded, “RUN!”

They raced down the passage together as tribesmen leaped out toward them. Betty drew her pistol from her belt, firing a single warning shot between their encroaching attackers. They scattered, as she’d anticipated, allowing her to lead her colleague to the gleaming sunlit exit at the top of the passage. She’d theorized that this had been an entombment passage, used to bring bodies into the catacombs so that the living and dead didn’t pass through the same doorways. With that at the back of her mind, she wondered what the tribe wanted to keep them from discovering so badly that they would abandon their own superstitions. She must have been close, she realized.

They ran into the jungle, weaving their way back to the camp with the use of Betty’s compass. After they caught their breath, Betty said, “Now you can thank me.”

Jones grinned, surprising her. “Is being around you always this exciting?” He asked. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to sit in a library and feel satisfied with my life again.”

She couldn’t help smiling back. Betty would look back on that fateful day for many years as the start of what was first a perfect partnership, and later a perfect marriage, but she didn’t realize it then. It would only be a few more days of running for their lives before they solved the mystery of the missing village together, and she could have counted the hours until the first time that he slid his hands into her hair and kissed her. Right at that moment, though, she hardly spared a thought for the way that her stomach fluttered in response to his crooked grin as she led him back to her camp. She’d have time to think about that after she found her answers.


	20. Dating Algorithm

It was supposed to be the most revolutionary dating website available. The company promised that their algorithms would not only match you with your most compatible partner, but they would use a predictive algorithm to anticipate your likely future interactions and guarantee a higher likelihood of matching with your soulmate. For a standard account, the site would show you the likely estimation of your first three dates together, including a small breakdown of your emotional percentages and percent of attachment following each face to face interaction. To improve their services, participants were asked to rate the accuracy of the predictions and provide feedback of their satisfaction.

 

Jughead thought it sounded like a futuristic conspiracy. Considering his feelings toward most social media, he was utterly set against trying something as invasive as a _dating website_. Archie rolled his eyes in exasperation and finally said the fateful words—

 

“Are you afraid it will be right?”

 

It was like they were in middle school again, and Archie had just pulled out the incontestable _triple dog dare._ Jughead grumbled and slid his laptop toward himself, grudgingly queueing up the site. Hearts flashed around their icon, with the words “Guaranteed Romance!” scrolling across a sub-banner in cheerful white script. I bet, Jughead thought bitterly to himself.

 

His fingers flew as he typed in his information, though he grew increasingly skeptical as the website prompted him with questions like “Rate your enjoyment of a walk on the beach, with 1 being would not enjoy at all and 5 being would remember forever.” He glanced up at Archie. “How do I feel about beaches?” he asked, eyebrows rising.

 

“Just fill it out, man,” Archie insisted.

 

Jughead tugged a lock of hair absently and stared at the screen, then looked up at Archie. Letting out a long sigh, he whined, “I can’t.”

 

With an exasperated groan, Archie slid the computer over and said, “You like beaches.”

 

Working together, they filled out the questionnaire and chose two semi-flattering photos. Jughead jokingly said, “Aren’t I supposed to take a picture where I’m flexing my muscles or something?”

 

Archie gave him a look.

 

“Okay, yeah,” Jughead laughed, closing the lid of his laptop. “I’m starving. Now that you got me to pimp myself out for Big Brother, you owe me a burger.”

 

————

 

They were walking out of Pop’s when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Jughead unlocked it without thinking, glancing down at the information that scrolled across his notifications. He glanced over at Archie. “Looks like we can find out how accurate this thing is before dinner,” he said.

 

“Good,” Archie commented, tapping on his own phone. “Then I can tell Veronica so that she stops bothering me about it.”

 

Jughead halted, outraged. “I should have known,” he muttered. “This had Veronica written all over it.”

 

Archie ran a hand through his hair, knowing he was caught. He sighed, then admitted, “She read something about it in a magazine and she hasn’t stopped talking about it ever since. And you’re our _most_ single friend, according to her.”

 

“What does _that_ mean?” He snapped.

 

Archie threw his hands up. “Hell if I know, Jug. But I’m out. You filled out the thing and I paid you off, so let us know if it works, I guess.”

 

With that, he took off for his shift at his dad’s construction company. Jughead shoved his hands and his phone back into his pockets, walking towards home.

 

————-

 

It was about one in the morning when Jughead finally opened the results from the website. His eyes skimmed over the disclaimer and then he clicked forward, opening the profile of his top match.

 

A pretty blonde stared out from the screen, her two photos looking more candid than staged. He read briefly over her profile, leaning that her name was Betty Cooper, and then skimmed the website’s prediction of their interactions.

 

98% compatibility, it read.

 

First date: bookstore. 15% anxiety, 28% excitement, 57% curiosity. Bond strength: 3/10.

 

His eyes hovered over that word, _bookstore_. Jughead laughed a little to himself and locked his screen. They couldn’t have a first date if he never messaged her, right? Veronica and Archie  would have to find another guinea pig.

 

—————

 

He closed his paperback with a sigh. Jughead checked the time in his phone—he had another three hours before his shift at the theater started, and he needed to pick up the next novel before then. Otherwise, he’d be watching _Ferdinand_ for the thousandth time, and he was fairly convinced that he would actually lose his mind if he allowed that to happen.

 

He took his motorcycle across town, setting his helmet on the seat before he went inside the bookstore. Jughead walked directly to the mystery section. His eyes were already skimming the names of the authors emblazoned on the paperback covers, running through the alphabet until he found the shelf he needed. Just as he reached out to take the next novel, a hand bumped his aside and closed around the spine.

 

Jughead looked up in a mix of surprise and outrage, locking eyes with none other than Betty Cooper.

 

His blood froze, mind unwilling to accept the impossibility of their meeting like this. She appeared similarly shocked, her pretty little mouth falling slightly open. “Oh my god,” she said, more to herself than to him.

 

He immediately saw the website results in his mind’s eye, remembering what it had said about their first date. “No,” he said, without realizing it.

 

“No?” Betty repeated, frowning. “I mean, I thought that someone with a name like _Jughead Jones_ must have signed up as a joke, and that’s why I didn’t message you, but you don’t have to be an asshole about—“

 

He interrupted her. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just thought that it wouldn’t happen if I didn’t message you, either.”

 

Betty straightened, holding his paperback, and tilted her head a little. “Didn’t you read the reports?” She asked. “People have been saying that the site accurately predicts their relationships after they sign up, even if they delete their profiles, and the premium accounts will even predict milestones.”

 

Jughead blinked at the underlying accusation in her words—standing in a bookstore, she’d asked him if he had read the disclaimers on the website. Of course he hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to admit that. Not when she was forming her first impressions of him. Even if he had no intention of letting a computer tell him who he was supposed to date, he didn’t want to seem like a complete idiot.

 

“Do you have a premium account?” he asked, ignoring the way his heart thumped in anticipation of her response.

 

With the way their conversation had been going, he was expecting her to glibly answer his question. Instead, her mouth quirked up in the hint of a smile. “Maybe I’ll tell you if you take me on a proper date next time,” she replied.

 

Jughead’s heart thumped again, noticeably, almost painfully. Betty turned and held his paperback snugly against her chest, made her way to the cash register, and glanced back at him once before she left the store. It was that moment when he realized that he was standing there dumbfounded and bookless, his mouth gaping.

 

—————-

 

He didn’t tell Archie, of course. For someone as disdainful toward technology as Jughead, telling Archie that he’d been right would be the end of all peace for the rest of their lives. Instead, he worked his shift and half-watched _Ferdinand_ from the projection booth, a certain blonde haired, half-smiling girl making her way in and out of his mind.

 

The moment that he was home, he dove for his laptop. He tapped his fingers against the side of the monitor as the page loaded. Quickly, his eyes scanned the summary for their second date.

 

Second date: theater. 23% anxiety, 52% excitement, 15% curiosity, 10% affection. Bond strength: 5/10.

 

Before he clicked the “send message” button, he made himself take a deep breath. What if this was how the website got you, though? What if you saw its predictions, and then enacted a self-fulfilling prophecy by doing what it said?

 

He considered that a long while. The thought gained in weight until he became convinced that he was right. Jughead shut the lid of the laptop, the mouse unclicked.

 

—————-

 

He’d be thinking about that when he saw Betty walk into his theater a few days later, purchase a single ticket for a new independent film, and then make her way to the concessions counter to buy a small popcorn and soda.

 

His manager had been talking to him about leaving early. Originally, Jughead wanted to argue for his right to stay. But seeing Betty, he gave in.

 

Jughead walked quickly to Betty’s side. “Hey Stephen,” he said to his coworker, as she jumped in surprise. “Use my discount on these, please.”

 

Stephen nodded and Betty quirked her eyebrow at Jughead. She accepted her snacks and said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

 

He smiled easily. “Oh, sure. Since that website said theater, I’m sure you’ve been going to every one in a fifty mile radius trying to find me.”

 

Betty innocently drew some soda through her straw, pursing her lips, before she said, “You do have a very high opinion of yourself, don’t you?”

 

Jughead winked and held out his arm. “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

 

Betty smiled lightly. “Not at all,” she said, slipping her hand through his arm.

 

During the movie, she shared some of her popcorn. After the credits, she asked for his phone and saved her number in his contacts. Jughead walked her to her car and went home feeling slightly dizzy and mostly thrilled, continually glancing down at his phone.

 

—————-

 

The following day, he sent a message to Betty at last. Jughead resolutely did not check the dating site’s recommendations, deciding that it was too eerie for anyone’s good. She replied almost instantly, with an emoji that seemed deep in contemplation, its hand on its mocking yellow chin. For the maddening hours that followed, he continually checked to see if she had agreed to his suggestion.

 

Finally, just before midnight, she sent a text that just said _yes._

 

Jughead picked her up outside her apartment complex at five o’clock. He drove slowly to Pop’s, angling the car he’d borrowed from Archie through town, figuring that she wouldn’t want to take his motorcycle just yet.

 

When they arrived, they sat in a booth and placed their orders. Jughead felt like the longer he spoke with Betty, the more things he discovered that linked them together. They shared the same favorite mystery author, they’d studied a similar program in undergrad, and they’d even ordered the same milkshakes.

 

Finally, when he worked up the courage, he said, “So did you have a premium account?” With a smile, he added, “I’m just wondering if you have a heads up on our wedding date.”

 

Betty just grinned quietly in response.


	21. Fifty Shades Bugged

Betty Cooper glanced over at her roommate, Veronica. “I can’t be late, V. We can have this conversation later.”

“Okay, but Betty, you have to apologize for me. Really. I begged for this interview for months, and I’m so sorry you have to go—“

Betty smiled reassuringly. “On an interview? I do this every day, stop thanking me. Besides, it will be relaxing to talk with a high-profile model rather than asking targeted political questions for once. You just worry about getting better, okay?”

Veronica gave a pitiful sniffle, drew her blanket further around her shoulders, and nodded. Besides what she’d said to her sick friend, Betty was privately excited to meet the very attractive Jughead Jones, even if she’d never admit it. Though she had always focused on her studies, and later building her career as an investigative journalist, she was still a human woman. She’d stared longingly at the cover of many a magazine before, aching to brush the signature lock of dark hair away from his eyes. No, covering for Veronica wasn’t going to be any trouble at all. She expected that he would be self-absorbed and horrible in person, which would make resisting her undeniable physical attraction to him a piece of cake. Looking sinfully handsome was his job, after all.

Betty grabbed her things and adjusted her glasses, rushing to the main floor of the apartment building to catch her Uber. It was a short ride downtown to the location of the photo shoot, where she had permission to observe Jones working before asking him the questions that Veronica had carefully scripted for her.

She glanced down at the pad. Betty was used to leaping out at politicians on trains and in grocery stores, spitting rapid-fire questions until she got information that could be spun into a story. This sort of hum-drum, premeditated interview felt like a vacation indeed. She hadn’t even bothered to read over the questions since the conversation would be agreed to by both parties involved.

Her press pass hung around her neck, though she’d turned the photo ID so that no one would notice the stark contrast between Veronica’s raven locks and Betty’s bright blonde ponytail.

An assistant let her into the studio. When she first saw Jughead Jones in person, Betty felt her soul briefly leave her body. It was lucky that they’d arranged for the observation of his process first, since Betty’s brain turned into soup the moment his blue eyes flashed in her direction. She clutched Veronica’s questions a little tighter, grateful again that they were already scripted. It was already clear that this wasn’t like ambushing a senator—not in any way.

She watched him fluidly move through several poses, working with the photography crew to find the best angles. Was she imagining that he kept looking at her with that smouldering gaze?

When the session wrapped, Jughead walked directly toward her, slipping a dark sport jacket over his cream button-down shirt. He flashed a crooked half-smile as he approached, sending a warm rush of desire coursing through her body. Betty swallowed around the lump that suddenly formed in her throat, glancing down at her list of questions.

“Oh, hi. I’m Betty Cooper, I’m here representing Veronica Lodge. We have an interview.” She squeaked, hating how her voice sounded so strangled.

Jughead nodded, unsurprised, and extended his hand. Betty stared at it for a moment like she’d forgotten what a handshake was, but then realized what was happening and placed her palm against his. He squeezed lightly as he shook, not uncomfortably, and some deeply repressed part of Betty’s mind wondered what it would be like to feel that hand running over the rest of her body. She chased the thought away and pushed her glasses up her nose with her other hand.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jughead said in a relaxed tone. He didn’t bother introducing himself. “Let’s go up to the offices for some privacy, so we aren’t interrupted during this interview.”

He didn’t wait for her agreement, but released her hand and moved quickly in the direction of the elevators. Betty had to do a little half-jog to catch up. Her mind was reeling—so far, Jughead was not at all the sort of interviewee she was used to, or expecting.

He pressed the elevator button for an upper floor then leaned back against the wall and looked at her. Betty told herself not to fidget, pretending to focus on her questions instead. She stared at the first line of Veronica’s tidy handwriting, not fully registering what it said as her mind shrieked high alerts about being in such an enclosed space with someone she found so innately attractive.

Betty wasn’t expecting to be so distracted in person, and she gave herself a quick mental slap to re-focus. She made herself look up and meet his eyes. Heat immediately seared across her cheeks, despite her best efforts to look calm and composed. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open at the moment those deep blue irises returned her gaze. Betty started forward eagerly, realized that she didn’t know where she was going, and then waited for Jughead to take the lead. Did she imagine the amused smile aimed in her direction as he passed?

He led her to a small office where two chairs were angled toward one another around a squat coffee table. One wall of the room was all window, overlooking the city beyond. Betty glanced over the New York skyline before sitting carefully and smoothing her hand over her skirt. Jughead draped himself over the other chair, his eyes calmly running over her figure from head to foot. She took a deep breath, glancing down at the first question.

“So,” she said, breaking the overwhelmingly tense silence. “Why did you become a model?”

He didn’t roll his eyes, but he did look slightly annoyed by the elementary question. “I was scouted,” he said. His voice was deep and a little gruff, resonating pleasantly across the small space between them. “You can read about it in every interview I’ve ever done. What’s your next question, Betty?”

She wasn’t expecting him to use her name. At the sound, her heart thumped and the room spun a little, a wave of dizziness washing over her. Betty swallowed and looked back at Veronica’s sheet. She decided to skip the next two questions, which were more mundane expository probes, and her eyes settled on another ‘why’ question stem about halfway down the page.

“Why is one of New York’s most eligible bachelors still single?” she read, and then a fierce blush spread over her face.

Jughead quirked an eyebrow, amused. “Now that’s what we call an assumption, Betty,” he drawled.

She looked up, mentally cursing Veronica for including such a loaded question, and automatically said, “You’ve got a girlfriend, then?”

His expression shifted in partial annoyance. “Another assumption,” he countered.

Betty raised her eyebrows, confused by his non-answers. “A boyfriend?” she asked, the words slipping out before she could stop them.

He leaned forward, resting his elbow on one knee. “No,” he replied, grinning a little. “Let’s just say that I’m not the type for traditional commitment.”

Betty stared down at the next few questions and realized they were all following a similar vein. She couldn’t make eye contact again, her face burning. “Sorry,” she said. “The rest of these questions are awful. Veronica wrote these, I didn’t know they were so focused on your personal life.”

Jughead raised one shoulder. “Maybe she has a crush,” he commented. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone found me irresistible.”

She still couldn’t meet his eyes. Even though Veronica had written the questions, Betty was finding it harder and harder to deny that she found him irresistible. Seeing him in photos was one thing, but in person there was no denying the charismatic energy that he seemed to exude like an overly attractive air freshener.

“Isn’t that an occupational hazard?” she asked sarcastically.

Jughead’s mouth curled up at the sides in response to her question. He looked at her levelly and returned, “Isn’t that why you’ve been staring at me ever since you got here?”

It was like his words short-circuited her mind. She choked a little as she tried to formulate a response, her face on fire. Jughead looked as if he’d been trying to elicit that reaction. He leaned back in his chair and grinned outright, brushing his hand through his hair. It seemed like the sort of thing someone would do as an absent gesture, but in this close proximity she could tell that he’d done it to make that signature lock of hair fall over his eyes.

Her fingers tingled in her lap, itching to reach out and brush it aside as she’d fantasized. “I think I’ve got enough for an article,” she announced abruptly, tucking the questions away. “And I’m so sorry, I should have read those prompts ahead of time.”

Jughead was still smiling. “It’s no problem, Betty. I’m used to being objectified, believe it or not.”

She practically ran for the elevators. It was a stupid move, because of course Jughead followed behind her and waited at her side. Betty kept her eyes on the little glowing button, willing the elevator to arrive sooner. As the doors opened, Jughead waited and let her go inside first.

Silence stretched between them, growing more and more awkward by the second. Finally, she said, “Thank you for letting me interview you. I’m not sure when Veronica’s article will be out.”

He didn’t answer, but stepped a little closer to her than she was expecting. Betty’s breath caught in her throat, her heart hammering at their unanticipated proximity to one another. The elevator kept smoothly moving downward, carrying them both toward the first floor. Without warning, Jughead reached over and pressed the stop button.

She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, but when he turned back to her she could see that his eyes were dark with an unreadable emotion. Desire was making her knees weak, and Betty unconsciously closed her hands around the elevator rail to steady herself. As soon as she returned her gaze to Jughead, he reached out and gently traced his fingers over her cheek.

Betty shivered at his touch, her breath quickening. He leaned forward and brushed his lips tenderly over hers, like he was questioning. In response, she pressed forward, silently giving her approval. It seemed to be the only thing that was holding him back, because Jughead tilted his head slightly and then his tongue was brushing over her lips. She clutched the railing a little more tightly as his mouth moved against hers, her eyes fluttering closed, her entire body feeling as if it were electrified. Jughead’s very hard form pressed against hers, pinning her against the wall of the elevator, his hands running gently over her sides and making her feel as if she were about to combust with need.

Betty wasn’t sure how long they were stopped in the elevator, attacking each other with the sort of animal magnetism that she’d thought was only for characters in romantic novels. But the elevator suddenly lurched to life, floating downward once more at some unknown person’s beckoning, and the two of them leaped apart.

Jughead’s chest was moving at a noticeably increased pace, rising and falling quickly as he stared at her like he was truly seeing her for the first time. He ran his hand through his hair—in a naturally absent gesture this time, glancing away from her flushed face, not calculating anything.

“I’m sorry,” he said, surprising her. “I don’t usually ravish women in elevators. Have you…” he paused, a change coming over his face as he met her eyes again. “Have you ever gone without wearing your glasses? You’re beautiful, Betty.”

She was immediately filled with a bizarre mixture of annoyance and excitement, which were so conflicting that she found it impossible to reconcile both at once. Betty settled on being angry, since that was the easiest to act upon. “I need them, actually,” she snapped.

Jughead looked apologetic, surprisingly. Maybe that hadn’t been the thing he intended to say, she realized. But still—she would probably never see him again after they got off this elevator, and how dare he kiss a woman who had come for a professional interview, then insult her? Betty glared, straightening her skirt, and let the anger wash through her.

His eyes were still exuding regret when the doors dinged at last and Betty moved to disembark. As she tried to move past him, he caught her sleeve. “It was good to meet you, Betty,” he said earnestly.

An undeniably large part of her wanted to push him back into the elevator and kiss him soundly. Instead, Betty nodded briefly and made her way into the lobby of the building. She tried to gather her thoughts during the Uber back to the apartment she shared with Veronica, knowing that she was going to be interrogated the moment she got home. Still, she couldn’t think of how she would describe Jughead Jones to anyone who asked, let alone in a story.

————

The next day, a small package arrived at the door of their apartment. Veronica signed for it, then set it on the counter next to Betty’s laptop. She was staring at the screen, the cursor mocking her tiny amount of progress on the Jughead Jones story.

Curious, Betty tore open the little box and stared in confusion at the BlackBerry cell phone inside. It was sitting over a tiny note, which she raised out of the box and held before her eyes.

_B, I didn’t have your number, and I needed to have a way to contact you. Text me and let me know when I can pick you up for dinner. See you soon, J_

Veronica screamed over her shoulder before Betty realized that she was even reading. With her heart in her throat, she picked up the phone and noticed its only contact.

 _You could have just asked for my number_ , she wrote.

Almost immediately, another response came in.

 _I’m not used to having to ask,_ he wrote back.

She bit her lip and thought, of course not. But even as Veronica was babbling excitedly in her ear, Betty was imagining their dinner. A slow smile spread over her face, her fingers closing around the phone a little bit tighter.


	22. Wedding Day

 

Betty’s eyes flew open. She turned her head as she threw one arm across the bed, momentarily confused by the expanse of cold sheets she felt there. Then her sleepy mind came fully back to consciousness, and she knew exactly why her fiancé wasn’t in bed. In fact, he was across town, staying with his dad on the South Side of Riverdale. She hadn’t cared either way, but he was highly suspicious about seeing the bride before the wedding. So, on the eve of their wedding day, she’d slept alone.

The sheets fell away from her silky pajamas as she sat up. They were a gift from a friend during the bachelorette party, with “Mrs” embroidered in baby blue across the back of the button-front shirt and a pair of matching shorts. As she draped her feet over the side of the bed, her toes found the edges of her fluffy slippers.

She crossed her childhood bedroom to the window, opening the lanes and drawing in a long breath of fresh air. It was cold now, but later the late summer air would warm enough that she would be comfortable in the lacy bodice of her gown. It did get hot during the summer months in Riverdale, but they were having an unusual cold spell. Just as well, in her opinion, since they would be dancing late into the night and it would probably feel nice when the sun set and the air cooled again. Betty glanced over her shoulder at the back of her bedroom door, where her dress was hung in preparation. A small smile spread over her face. She couldn’t wait to dance in that dress with her new husband.

Betty looked over at the clock, registering that it was just after 4AM. Really, she knew that she should go back to sleep before their big day got started, but she knew that she was too awake now to bother lying back down in bed.

Her eyes picked out the portion of the horizon where she knew Jughead was sleeping across town. Once long ago, that distance between their homes had felt like a tangible divide. Like they were Montagues and Capulets, forbidden from uniting. It was a short-lived time, when Jughead had propped a ladder up against the windowsill she was leaning against now, and he had climbed into her bedroom to kiss her.

Shortly after that, their lives had disintegrated.

Deep down, she was a little disappointed still that her father wouldn’t be able to attend her wedding. Some vestige of affection within her that grew through fixing cars together and sharing milkshakes at Pop’s had always retained hope that her father would walk her down the aisle…but of course, she found his crimes inexcusable.

Instead, they had agreed that Jughead’s Dad would give her away. Betty didn’t mind her soon-to-be father-in-law standing in, since he’d been like a father to her ever since she’d started dating Jughead in high school, anyway.

Betty looked over at Archie’s darkened window. It had been years since he’d lived at home, but some part of her was still expecting to see her longtime friend starting his morning routine whenever she looked that way. He was back in town for the wedding, since he was Jughead’s best man, but he was staying at the Five Seasons with the rest of the wedding party and guests. There had been a massive party there two nights before, as everyone got into town. Betty was glad that they’d had the foresight to host all of the drinking two days prior to the wedding, since it felt like her throbbing headache had finally cleared. She didn’t want to be hungover when she finally became Mrs. Jones at last.

Her eyes slid over to her phone. Jughead didn’t want any bad luck before the wedding, but if she text messaged him, they wouldn’t be seeing each other, right? As the sun rose over Riverdale, Betty unlocked her phone.

_Are you awake?_

She waited for a moment before her phone buzzed again in her fingers.

_Yes. Couldn’t sleep. Why are you up?_

Betty felt her whole body relaxing, like she’d just slipped into a bath of warm water. She smiled at her phone, even though he couldn’t see her.

_Same. I’m ready to be Mrs. Jones._

While he typed his response, she glanced across the town.

_Just a few hours Betts. I can’t wait to see you._

_I don’t think we’ve been apart this long in years._

He took a moment to respond. _We won’t be apart again, Betty. After today, we’ll really be together forever._

She sent back a simple, _I love you,_ before her eyes overflowed with tears and a huge smile spread over her face. Betty looked up at the colors streaking over the sky and wiped at her cheeks, her heart so full it hurt. That afternoon couldn’t come quickly enough. Their wedding was going to be the best day of her life.


	23. The best presents are surprises

 

Betty threw back the covers and glanced at her sleeping husband, hoping that she hadn’t woken him up. A lock of dark hair fell over his eyes as she waited, but his chest continued to rise and fall evenly, and his eyes stayed closed.

Jughead had been up late, even though it was Christmas Eve, working on a last-minute revision on his latest short story for a January publication. She didn’t want to disturb him—he had been working so hard lately, she knew he needed his sleep. Besides, if he woke up now, he would ruin his Christmas surprise.

She crept into the kitchen, quietly getting the electric kettle going and fishing out a packet of ginger green tea from the jar on the counter. Betty absently ate a few crackers as it brewed, fighting to quell the general sensation of nausea that seemed a constant irritant in her life these days. Once she’d set the tea bag to steep, she carefully extracted the little box from the back of the cupboard where they kept baking ingredients and slid open the lid.

Moving around to the back of the glowing Christmas tree in the center of their living room, Betty carefully hung one last ornament. She knelt down and picked up the narrow, long package she’d wrapped a few weeks before, setting it on the edge of the overstuffed chair where Jughead usually liked to drink his coffee in the morning.

Mission accomplished, she went back to the kitchen and got her cup of tea. Betty carefully dropped the spent tea bag into the trash and blew the steam away from her mug. She took a few sips, feeling the liquid settle into her nebulous stomach. The town outside their windows was quiet, and for good reason—it was well after midnight, after all. Betty sipped her tea and listened, expecting to hear bells or carolers or any other residual holiday noises. Instead, she heard a soft pattering against their house. For a second, she couldn’t fathom what was making the sound, and then she realized—it was the snow.

She smiled a little, one hand absently settling over her lower stomach. Betty settled into her own overstuffed chair to finish her tea.

When she slipped back into bed, she tucked herself against Jughead’s side and drew the comforter over her shoulder. As her feet slid against the side of his leg, Jughead rolled toward her and draped one arm over her side. Betty closed her eyes, her nausea abated for the moment, and she drifted quickly back into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Jughead opened his eyes as the sunlight trickled in through their bedroom curtains. He nestled contentedly against the warm, cuddly mass of his sleeping wife. For a few moments, he just held her and reflected on how happy he was with their lives. He’d loved Betty for as long as he could remember. This morning, like most mornings, he began his day by thinking again about how lucky he was to wake up next to her. Jughead smiled and pressed a soft kiss against the tender skin behind her ear.

Before she stirred, he slipped carefully out of bed. Jughead watched for a moment to make sure that Betty didn’t wake up. She just rolled onto her back and nuzzled against his pillow, her lips falling open in a way that made him want to lean down and kiss her. That would surely wake her, though, so he moved quietly out of the room and went into the kitchen instead.

He got around a cup of tea, the way she liked it, placing it on the edge of a breakfast tray. Jughead scrambled some eggs and put bread in the toaster. Carefully, so that he didn’t spill anything, he carried the tray into the bedroom.

“Morning, Betts,” he said softly. “Merry Christmas.”

Betty blinked as he leaned over and kissed her, sitting back against the pillows so that he could set the tray on her lap. She smiled brightly. “Morning, Juggie. Merry Christmas. You didn’t have to do all this.”

He raised one shoulder. “I wanted to. You haven’t been feeling well lately, and you were sick at Veronica’s, so I thought I’d take extra care of you today.”

Betty grimaced a bit at the reminder of the way she’d darted off during Veronica’s annual Christmas party to throw up in the bathroom. Jughead was hoping that she would go to the doctor soon if her flu didn’t let up, but what he’d said wasn’t a lie either. He wanted to take extra care of his wife every day, truth be told. But if he couldn’t pamper her on Christmas, then when could he?

She picked at her food, holding out a piece of toast for him. Jughead snuggled against her side as she ate, then took the tray back into the kitchen when she was done. He let Betty get up while he made himself a cup of coffee. When he came out of the kitchen, he saw her curled up in her chair, smiling in his direction.

Before he sat down in his chair, he noticed a small gift lying against the decorative pillow. He quirked an eyebrow at Betty as she said, “See what Santa brought you.”

With a playful smile, he unwrapped the ribbon and lifted the lid. Looking down at the contents of the box, he glanced up at Betty with a confused expression. Then, feeling a little foolish, he looked back down.

“Is this— _ours_?” He asked, dumbstruck. The little plastic stick seemed so illegible, despite its double-lined window and handy printed visual key. In response, Betty smiled shyly and rested her hand on her belly.

“Surprise?”

He rose from his spot, carefully setting the box aside. A smile so wide it hurt his cheeks spread over his face, and he wrapped his arms around her, intending at first to squeeze her tightly against himself but realizing that he needed to be careful. Gently, he slipped his flat palms over her belly, kneeling down and placing a kiss between them. When he looked up, Betty was smiling and crying.

“We’re going to be parents,” he said, testing the word out loud. Immediately, it was followed by the terrifying, overwhelming fear that he wouldn’t be good enough. Thinking of his own unconventional upbringing, and all the scars and markings that came with his unusual life, he couldn’t imagine failing to protect his baby in the same way that his dad had sometimes failed to protect him, in the way his mom had utterly quit. Marrying Betty had been the happiest day of his young life, and this day felt like a close second. He couldn’t imagine abandoning his budding little family the way his parents had fallen through for theirs, but the terror of accidentally repeating history was too real to push aside.

Betty ran her hands through his hair, leaning over and kissing the top of his head. It was like she knew what sort of dark thoughts were rushing through his mind. Softly she whispered, “You’re going to be the best daddy. I know it.”

Rising back to his feet, he met her eyes in concern. “Are you okay? The way you’ve been sick lately, is it because of this? Can I do anything for you?”

Betty smiled and kissed him, cutting off his line of questioning. “I’m fine,” she answered. “Yes, this is why I’ve been sick, but from what I understand I should feel better in a few weeks. And yes—please keep loving me, Jug. Even when I’m huge and hideous.”

“Betty Jones,” he said, chastising. “You could never be hideous, not even if you tried. And I’ll say it every day until the day I die—I love you more than anything. Always and forever, no matter what.”


	24. Puppy Eyes

When Jughead looked at her in the store with the same face the puppy was making, Betty knew she’d already lost all resolve to deny his request. Whether she’d planned on it or not, they were going to take that puppy home. A single look from her husband melted away all of her objections.

They owned their own home, anyway. It wasn’t like they needed anyone’s permission. And she had a sudden vision of convincing him to do a professional photo shoot with the pug, making the same face, and then getting his promotional manager to print it inside the dust jacket of his next novel. It was due out in a few months…she had time to enact her plan.

So it was that the Jones family acquired a small pug, named Fitzy (which was short for Fitzgerald, which they saved for formal occasions, and that was short for F. Scott Fitzgerald, which they saved for rare instances when he did something utterly atrocious, like chewing up a recently printed manuscript or pooping in someone’s shoes).

Fitzy wasn’t particularly high maintenance, and Betty quickly came to love him. She didn’t dote on him nearly as much as Jughead, who took to scrolling through shopping websites on his phone at night in search of epic pug clothing. Betty noticed dryly that Fitzy was dressing better than his owner these days. It was clearly time to put a stop to it when Jughead ordered him a tiny leather jacket and took to coordinating his own clothes with the dog before they went out in public. Betty walked fifteen feet behind them for a week whenever they went out until Jughead fully got the message.

He was much smaller than Hot Dog, the Serpents’ communal pet. Betty didn’t mind, since Hot Dog had been high energy and required a lot of walking. Fitzy loved two things: eating and cuddling. Incidentally, his owners loved doing those things too.

Fitzy also came with the added benefit of keeping Alice Cooper’s visits short. Betty had never been allowed to have a pet as a child, since her mother felt that animals in the house were dirty. It turned out, her mother openly disliked dogs, and so began avoiding the Jones household on a more regular basis. That was fine with both of them. They’d been regretting letting her bully them into giving her a key for months—and now, they had their very own adorable Alice repellant.

In short, Betty didn’t ever regret buying Fitzy and giving in to Jughead’s puppy eyes. Not even a little bit.


	25. First House

In terms of full body pain, Jughead had to describe moving day as one of the most difficult days of his life. As long as he was carrying boxes in and out of the house, his mind didn’t have time to register the way that every single muscle in his body was screaming out in protest. By mid-afternoon, he felt like both of his feet were just bruises. If he took one more step in what used to be his trusty old chucks, he thought that his toes really might start to fall off.

Of course, having a lot of friends on hand to carry in boxes helped. But Archie couldn’t move a sofa by himself, so Jughead ended up hoisting one end and praying to any god that would listen for a few more hours of strength.

As the sun began to set, Betty announced that they’d finally cleared out the moving van. Jughead collapsed gratefully onto a plastic-wrapped mattress, not caring at all about the way it immediately stuck to his sweat-coated skin. For a long while, he just lay there and let himself feel the way his muscles were throbbing. Then Betty nudged his foot with her knee and said, “Are you still alive, Jug?”

He frowned, glancing down at her, and said, “Debatable. I hurt in places I didn’t know I could hurt right now.”

She lay down next to him, reaching over and stroking his hair away from his face. Jughead could see that his fiancé was exhausted, too, but even after moving all of their worldly possessions she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. With her hair piled in a knot on top of her head, no makeup, and an outfit consisting of his old t-shirt over a pair of athletic shorts, she certainly wasn’t ready for a night at the MET. Still, she looked worlds more attractive than he felt, and he traced his fingers over her hip where his shirt rode up to let her know.

“I can’t believe we did it,” she breathed, smiling brightly at him. They’d discussed buying this place for months, and finally it was her promotion that convinced them to do it. Surprisingly, three bedroom houses with bonus office spaces were difficult to come by in their price range, unless they wanted to build an addition themselves. Betty had fallen in love with this house the moment they’d seen it though, and Jughead had called all of his publishing contacts to ask for advances on future work to pull together the funds for their down payment.

He returned Betty’s smile and kissed her, happy to see how elated she was and knowing that he’d been able to contribute to that emotion. They slept on the mattress bag that night, too tired to begin looking for sheets or blankets. The real work would start in the morning.

Jughead peeled himself off the bed sometime around nine in the morning. He wasn’t sure if he hurt so badly because of the way he’d slept, or if his muscles had continued to bruise and swell from the abuse he’d heaped upon himself the day before. Walking into the bathroom, he found a box sitting on the counter and tore open the tape—hopefully, it would be the contents of Betty’s bathroom apartment. He dug under plastic bags of cotton balls, bottles of hairspray, and more body lotions than he thought one woman could use in a lifetime. Finally, at the bottom he found the bottles that belonged in the medicine cabinet. Jughead’s fingers closed around a bottle of Advil and dragged it to the surface like buried treasure from a lake bed.

He took his loot to the kitchen, finding a cup and filling it with tap water.

Glancing over, he saw a toaster sitting on the counter. Maybe it was his stomach grumbling, or maybe it just hit him at that moment, but Jughead realized that _he owned a toaster now._

Sure, it felt like they’d been practically living together since high school. He’d stayed in her college dorm more often than he’d slept in his own bed as they worked toward their undergraduate degrees. When Betty got her first apartment, Jughead had eventually kept some of his belongings in a few of her drawers to make it easier on both of them when he stayed over. But everything had always been hers—Betty’s couch, Betty’s pots and pans, Betty’s washing machine. Now that he had a signed piece of paper and a matching key, she’d said that all of these things were his too.

If he’d been any less certain of his future with Betty, it might have made him nervous. But Jughead was just as sure now as he was when they were sixteen that Betty Cooper was the only woman in the world he’d ever love.

He fished out the pieces of the coffee pot— _their_ coffee pot—from a box labeled “kitchen” and put it together. Luckily the coffee and filters had been put in the same box, so he got a pot brewing and began searching for two mugs. They’d thrown a cooler of food into the fridge at some point the day before, so he poured a bit of cream into the bottom of each cup and waited for the drip to finish.

Furniture was strewn haphazardly around the space that would eventually be their living room. Boxes lined the walls everywhere he looked. Jughead groaned inwardly at the inescapable reminders of the work that lay ahead.

Why did it feel like he’d filled two small boxes with all his worldly possessions, and the rest had come with her? Still, he knew that things like end tables and napkin rings were items that would turn the house into a home over time. He’d always appreciated the decorative details of his friends’ homes growing up, but FP and Jughead just didn’t have the same design acumen that Alice or Mary had. So Betty came with Christmas ornaments and table runners, and Jughead came with a battered old MacBook instead. His belongings were decidedly on the practical end of things.

The coffee pot beeped at last. Jughead went back into the bedroom, equipped with two steaming mugs, and gently woke his future bride. It was time to start unpacking in _their_ first house.


	26. A kiss with a fist is better than none

It began with a series of innocuous transgressions. Leaving a wet towel on the floor, starting a new roll of toilet paper without replacing the old tube on the holder…things that took her less than ten seconds to fix, but built an underlying foundation of irritation.

Then it became larger things, like shrinking their clothes in the dryer (including her brand new sweater!) and leaving the bed unmade (was she the only one who knew how to straighten a blanket?)

Things reached an intolerable level when she discovered an empty carton of milk in their fridge, beard shavings left in the bathroom sink, and a mountain of dirty dishes waiting in the kitchen.

Before she confronted him about any of it, she tried leaving a note on the dishes. Sure, looking back it was a little passive aggressive, and she was mature enough to admit that simply having a conversation about these issues would have been much easier instead of the fight that ensured. But really, the tempest had been brewing ever since they’d moved in together. It was only a matter of time before the storm broke loose.

It began with a series of text messages.

_I got your note. If you wanted me to do the dishes, you should have just asked._

Simple enough reaction, but there was no sign of any apology or corrective behavior. So she glared at her phone, ire rising, and quickly typed out a response.

_Really? I’ve been asking you for weeks since we moved in not to leave towels on the floor, but that hasn’t changed either._

His retort was quick.

_I’ve already had to clean your hair out of the tub drain, so let’s call it even._

Hardly a fair trade, she thought. Her list of grievances was far more extensive than dishes and towels. Chewing her lip in irritation, she tapped out a reply.

_We’ll talk about this when I get home._

She had every right to be outraged. Sure, he was writing while school was on summer break. He’d be going back to work in a few weeks, and then he’d have no time to do extra chores around the house. But in the meantime—she wasn’t a cleaning service. There was no summer break in investigative journalism, and she was sick and tired of doing the lion’s share of the housework. It felt like he’d been much tidier when he’d just been staying occasionally in her apartment. What had changed?

When she raged into the house, tossing her keys onto the side table much more forcefully than necessary, she almost relented at the way he flinched in response to her clear anger. But she wasn’t willing to lose this battle, so she walked quickly across the living room to poke a finger against his chest.

“You need to help me keep the house clean,” she grit out between her teeth, glaring up at her husband.

His look of surprise transmuted into one of irritation. “Who does all the sweeping and vacuuming?” He demanded. “And all the yard work? I do a lot of stuff around here too.”

She shook her head. “You’re making messes more than you clean up,” she pointed out. She could see the dishes piled up from the middle of the living room, peering across their open-concept floor plan and looking directly at the sink. Her note had been moved onto the counter, but everything else was virtually untouched.

He rolled his eyes. “I live here. Everything isn’t always going to look pristine—houses are meant to be lived in.”

She was furious. Curling her hands into fists until her fingers were digging into her palms, she snapped, “There’s a difference between living in a house and living like an animal.”

He took a small step toward her, anger clear on his face as well. Lowering his voice, he said, “You think I’m an animal?”

She closed the distance between them, still so angry that she wanted to slap him. Instead, she drew his face down and crushed her lips against his.

He slid his hands over her hips, closing them around her thighs and lifting her up. As she wrapped her legs around his waist, she drew his lower lip between her teeth and applied just a little bit too much pressure. He made a noise somewhere between a groan and a growl.

She became conscious that he’d carried her into the bedroom when he let her drop onto the unmade mattress. The reminder of yet another thing that had been frustrating her fueled her rage, and she quickly pulled him onto the bed with her.

Hooking a leg over him, she rolled them both until she had him pinned beneath her. She just caught a glimpse of the glint in his eyes before he caught her ribs beneath his fingers and started to tickle, causing her to writhe and lose her grip on him. Within seconds, he flipped her onto her back. She gasped and struggled, but he dipped his head and kissed her again, urgently, insistently, countering her fury with passion.

She pushed uselessly upward again, knowing that she was stuck, her frustration erupting in the form of somewhat hysterical giggles. “I just want you to pick up a little more!” she exclaimed, breathless.

His chest was heaving from their wrestling, too. With a smirk, he lowered his head against hers. “Fine,” he replied, “but next time, just ask nicely.”

She couldn’t help grinning back, her frustration finally broken, forced to admit that her passive aggressive method of communicating her irritation had been childish. With more tenderness than she’d shown him before, she lifted herself up from the bed and grazed her lips against his, feeling the instant that he melted against her.

It was the first fight they had after getting married and moving in together. But when she thought later about the way they made up, she couldn’t help letting a secretive smile curl the corners of her lips.


	27. Bun in the Oven

The day after Betty’s due date, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the baby was holding out until Thanksgiving.

She was past the cute pregnant stage of nesting: setting up the nursery, sobbing as she laid a tiny onesie over her belly, eating triple her weight in pickles because of an overwhelming craving. No, this was the nitty gritty stage of pregnancy—she was massive, her entire body ached, she had to pee every thirty seconds, and she couldn’t remember a time before the seemingly endless heartburn she was enduring. Jughead tried his best to make her comfortable, but she hadn’t been able to see her legs in weeks, and moving anywhere in her own home felt like maneuvering a bull through a china shop.

The largest issue with the baby being overdue, though, was that Betty and Jughead had volunteered to host Thanksgiving. Her expectation was that she would have had a week for recovery before inviting their family and friends into their home to see their newborn. Instead, baby Jones had its own plans.

She put both her hands on her swollen belly and leaned forward, looking down at the shifting baby pushing out against her skin. “Your time is up,” she said sternly, frowning. “Vacation is over. Check out was six days ago at 11 AM.”

Betty looked up at the sound of laughter from the doorway. Jughead was wiping off a measuring cup with a dish towel, his face soft as he looked at her. Unaccountably, tears began to well in her eyes. Her husband noticed, of course—he always noticed things like that—and when he started forward she couldn’t help it as they poured over her cheeks.

“Betts, don’t cry,” he said gently. Moving to her side, Jughead brushed his thumb over her cheek and wrapped his arms around her, setting the measuring cup on the couch at her side. She curled against him as best she could, her movement restricted by her aching back and bulging stomach. That just built her frustration and made her cry more, so Jughead hugged her even tighter. He smoothed one hand over her belly, drawing up her shirt and pressing his lips against her taut skin. “Stop making your mommy cry,” he admonished.

Hearing him refer to her as mommy always filled her heart with happiness. Jughead glanced up from her belly as her tears continued to flow, though she smiled down at him. “I love you,” she whispered. She ran her hand over his head, fingers drifting through his dark hair, wondering again if their baby would have his hair or hers. But her mind was focused more acutely on their impending dinner—the dinner she’d been planning on cooking.

Jughead kissed her belly once more and rose, picking up the measuring cup. Reluctantly, he said, “We’re out of brown sugar. Can I substitute regular sugar, or should I go get some?”

She frowned, absently running her hands over her stomach as the baby shifted in its father’s absence. It seemed like the two of them already had a bond, since the baby always pushed out a hand or a foot in response whenever Jughead touched her stomach. Mentally running over everything that needed to be cooked involving brown sugar, she said, “Have you started the sweet potatoes?”

He shook his head. “I was still working on pie filling.”

Betty shifted, starting the Herculean feat of getting up. “I’ll go get it, you need to keep going on the vegetables.”

Jughead started forward, helping her get her balance. “You can’t go by yourself, Betty. What if something happens while you’re out? I’m going with you.”

She put her hands on her lower back, trying to relieve some of the pressure, and narrowed her eyes at him. This was exactly why she was so frustrated. Betty knew he was right, but that didn’t mean she liked it. “We have people coming over in a few hours, Jug. You have to keep cooking, or nothing will be ready in time.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. Setting the cup and towel down on the kitchen counter, he slid his phone out of his pocket and began to text.

“I’ll get Dad to pick some up and come by early. Just relax, baby. I’ve got this.”

She moved herself to a closer chair. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jughead to pull everything together, but cooking a Thanksgiving feast was beyond what he usually had to do in the kitchen. She could chop vegetables or stir something or—

Jughead deposited a book into her hands with a meaningful look. Before she could protest, he leaned down and repeated, “I’ve got this.”

Betty bit her lower lip but opened the book to her page, accepting that he wasn’t going to let her help.

A few minutes later, her father-in-law arrived with a bag of brown sugar and a massive smile. He handed his son the ingredient and crossed through the kitchen to give Betty a hug before she could struggle out of her chair. “How are you doing?” he asked, glancing down at her belly.

Betty sighed heavily. “I’m ready to meet this baby,” she said, letting some of her irritation grate out in her tone.

FP gave her a sympathetic look. “I remember, Gladys was so mad when Jug was late. I think we walked down every street in this town, trying to get things started.”

She started to push herself up. “Is that what I need to do?”

He laughed. “Let me help with dinner, and you can take Jughead hiking tomorrow. What time is your mom coming over?”

Betty glanced down at the screen of her phone. “She should be here with Polly and the twins in about an hour.”

FP’s eyebrows rose. “I’m going to help, so we should be on time. You just relax, and let us know if you need anything.”

With that, he turned back to the kitchen and began helping Jughead cut up carrots and green beans. Betty tried to focus on her book, but instead she kept glancing up at the two men working side by side. She’d seen Jughead and FP interact many times over the years, of course—so it was probably just her hormones—but Betty swiped at her cheeks in irritation as she felt herself starting to cry again.

FP elbowed Jughead a bit, nodding his head toward her. Wiping his hands on a towel, her husband left the kitchen and came to her side. “Betts, it’s okay—“ he started to say.

She interrupted with a wave of her hand. “I’m fine, it’s stupid that I’m crying anyway. I was just thinking that it’s so sweet that your dad is helping you—and maybe one day our baby will be there with you—“

He squeezed her hand, smiling. “I’m sure they will. It’s not stupid. Try to relax, though.”

Before she could respond, she heard the sound of their door opening. “FP Jones, I didn’t know that you could use a whisk,” said the voice of her mother, tinged with amusement.

With a little extra help from her mom, while Polly kept the twins amused, they managed to get the table set with all the side dishes and delicacies that went along with the holiday for their respective families. For the Jones men, that was a side of green beans with almonds that FP’s mother used to make every year. For Betty’s family, it was the sweet potato recipe she’d gotten from her mother last year when they’d hosted Thanksgiving for the first time.

They talked and laughed together well into the evening. Polly and her mom gave Betty empathetic glances across the table, helping to clear the table so that she didn’t have to ponderously lumber back and forth from the kitchen to the dining table. Before they left for the evening, Betty’s mom gave her a hug and reminded her to call if anything happened.

Betty curled up with Jughead in the couch as best she could, letting him press his ear against her belly. The baby promptly kicked his cheek, making a grin spread across his face.

“I think they waited until they got their turkey dinner,” she grumbled. “This baby already loves food as much as their daddy.”

Jughead just rubbed her belly again. The baby pressed hard in response, rolling again and making Betty shift uncomfortably. Her husband leaned up and kissed her, his lips pressing gently against hers, hand still holding her belly. “I think mommy is my favorite dish, though. You’re so beautiful, Betty. I don’t know what I did to deserve you in my life.”

She sighed happily. “You deserve every good thing in the world in your life. You’re amazing.”

In the middle of the night, Betty sat bolt upright. “Jug,” she said, shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes, blinking at her in confusion for a moment before fully awakening.

“Is it time?” he asked. Betty nodded, her heart pounding. Jughead threw aside the blankets. With a smile that lit up his whole face, he said, “Let’s go meet our baby.”


	28. Forsythe Pendleton Jones IV

Betty threw her keys into her purse as she closed the door of her SUV, looking down at her phone. A rapid series of text messages were coming through, one after another, all originating from the same sender. As her husband vented, Betty put her steadily buzzing phone in the pocket of her dress. She lifted her chin and walked through the doors of Riverdale High School, disoriented momentarily as she always was by the updates that had been put in place after she graduated. Her eyes shifted between memories of the past and observations of the present. The main office had moved to a new location, and she had known that for several years—ever since Jughead had gotten a position teaching English full time, to supplement his writing career.

Mr. Jones was a favorite of the students. His edgy past and the rumors surrounding his history as a student at Riverdale High made him the constant subject of discussion.

That was great for Jughead, who commanded so much respect from his students that he rarely had to deal with any sort of behavioral issues. Instead, he could focus on instilling a love of literature in his classes. But his popularity as a teacher seemed to be in almost exact opposition to someone else’s popularity as a student, and that was what brought Betty into the school that afternoon.

The buzzing of her phone ceased, so Betty slid it out of her pocket and glanced at the messages.

_This isn’t the first time, and admin is looking at me to control him._

_He constantly keeps pushing me away._

_I don’t think he even likes me_.

_Am I a bad dad? I try my best but I feel like I’m failing._

_It was so much easier when he was little._

_If he just wasn’t so bitter and sarcastic to the other kids, they wouldn’t have a problem with him._

_Sorry to make you come up here again._

_I’ll meet you in the office._

She didn’t reply, slipping the phone back into her pocket. It wasn’t news to Betty that Jughead was having trouble with their son, or that he was worrying about the impact he was having on his life. But this was the first time she’d been called into the school concerning a physical fight, and her heart was thumping as her mind raced to determine how they would address this issue at home.

As she turned into the main office, her eyes easily picked out the dark-haired, green-eyed figure of their teenaged son. Betty thought briefly of Jughead’s text— _it was so much easier when he was little_ —and her heart twisted a little in her chest. She didn’t think that she would ever look at him without remembering what it felt like to hold her baby, how he sounded as he learned to speak, the way that he used to be overflowing with energy (so much that she sometimes used to regret that it wasn’t socially acceptable to keep your elementary school student on a toddler leash). Now, it felt like he slept all the time. When he spoke, he had very little to say to either of his parents. And Betty couldn’t remember the last time he’d let her hug him without turning away in embarrassment from her arms.

Forsythe Pendleton Jones IV looked up as mother sat down beside him, then glanced away with a scowl. Betty reached over before she could stop herself to brush a piece of hair out of his eyes, but he batted her hand away. That was when she noticed the bruises and the whole situation changed.

“Oh my god,” she said, sucking in a sharp breath. “What happened? Who did this?”

The principal, a young woman who had replaced Weatherbee after his retirement several years before, looked severely at Betty. “Let’s wait for Mr. Jones to join us before we explain. No need to go over this more than once, right FP?”

The teenager just grunted, looking away from both adult women and glaring into nothingness.

Moments later, the door opened and Jughead entered the room. He was already frowning at their son, the irritation that had come through in his text messages written clearly across his face. Betty worried her lower lip absently—she could already tell that there was going to be an argument between them. The only question was whether it would happen now or later.

“Sorry,” Jughead said, more to his boss than his family. He took the other empty chair, giving junior another stern look.

The teen rolled his eyes and slumped lower in his chair.

“So what happened? Who did this to him?” Betty asked again. Jughead straightened at that, looking at FP more closely, his eyes flicking up to meet Betty’s in sudden understanding.

The principal stared at FP until he sighed and straightened, uncrossing his arms.

“It was Adam Mantle,” he snapped. “And he hit me first, so I don’t know why we have to go through all of this.”

The principal folded her hands, arching an eyebrow. “Because it’s school policy to suspend anyone involved in a fight,” she clarified, “regardless of their involvement.”

Betty pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. Years ago, Jughead had been suspended for fighting Reggie Mantle, though he was definitely provoked into doing it. From the little she heard about Adam at home, Betty wondered if this situation wasn’t the same.

Jughead must have been recalling the same incident. He regarded his boss and said, “It seems like that policy punishes people who’ve been bullied.”

She sighed. “If FP hadn’t hit back, I could have addressed this situation that way. We have a zero tolerance policy for bullying, and the other student would have been considered for expulsion. As it is, since both students exchanged blows, I’m hearing two conflicting stories. Our policy is designed to prevent favoritism and punish fighting, nothing else.”

“I get that,” Jughead said. “But we’ve been reporting incidents with Adam for months.”

“My son shouldn’t have to take a beating before you do something about the person antagonizing him,” Betty pointed out. She felt like she was able to be a little more outspoken than Jughead—if he wanted another contract for the fall, he couldn’t afford to argue too much about this, and she knew that. “I’m glad that he defended himself after he was attacked.”

FP glanced over at her with a surprised expression. Whatever he’d been thinking when they got there, clearly he wasn’t expecting his parents to take his side. Betty reached over and put her hand on his shoulder, looking at the principal expectantly.

“I wish it was my decision, Mrs. Jones. If you’d like to contest the policy, our next board meeting will be held on Saturday. Feedback like this is the best way to get these things changed.”

Betty shook her head. “I want to know why nothing has been done,” she argued. “I understand the policy in this situation, but that doesn’t explain how you allowed things to escalate between them.”

The principal looked at Jughead, probably expecting some support. Instead, he raised his eyebrows and put his hand on FP’s other shoulder, nonverbally siding with his family. She turned and typed something on her computer, turning the screen toward Betty. “I can’t show you another student’s file,” she replied. Glancing at Jughead, she added, “And it would be unethical to look it up later, in this instance. But I can show you the reports involving your student, to clarify the situation. FP isn’t blameless, either.”

At that, Jughead stood up. “Sarah,” he said, looking down at her. “Don’t be insulting. I know my kid isn’t perfect, but I’m not blind, either. This isn’t something he’s responsible for instigating.”

She pressed her lips together, nostrils flaring as Jughead addressed her by her first name. Betty waited for her response, making sure that her expression conveyed her irritation with the principal. “Sit down, Forsythe, please. All that I can say is that we will sort this out. The suspension length is at my discretion, and that’s why FP is only being sent out for a day. This issue will not come up again when both boys return.” She looked at the teenager then, seemingly trying to wordlessly communicate some sort of ultimatum. Betty clicked her tongue, truly angry now, realizing for a fleeting moment that she was echoing her own mother.

“So you’ve decided to punish my son less because you failed to help him proactively, forcing him to defend himself,” she snapped. “I don’t think that I need to remind you of your liabilities, here. Since you’ve neglected to address the situation in the past, I’ll be taking FP home today so that he can _recover_. I expect that this whole incident will be documented _appropriately_ and stay off his record.” Picking up her purse, Betty looked down at FP. “Come on, I’m going to sign you out.”

The principal looked helplessly from Betty to Jughead, then squared her shoulders. “This is my school, and I have the final say in disciplinary actions,” she protested.

Betty leaned toward her, placing a hand on the desk. “I’m sure you’re aware of my expose on health code violations in Riverdale dining establishments. I would love to research bullying policies in our schools and provide the town with a critical view of the way they’re being implemented.”

The other woman sucked in a breath, her eyes widening fractionally. Jughead put his hand on Betty’s arm and she straightened, looking over at him with a softer expression. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” he said, with a glance at his boss. “I’ll see you both at home in a few hours.”

Betty nodded, ushering her son out into the main office. She signed the check out sheet and nodded to the secretary. Neither mother or son exchanged a word until they were both in the car, doors closed. Drawing in a deep breath, Betty said, “Okay, kid. Explain.”

FP ran a hand through his hair. Betty realized, if she squinted, that he was virtually a carbon copy of his father at that age. She could even remember Jughead snapping, _I’m weird. I’m a weirdo. I don’t fit in. And I don’t want to fit in…_

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, she thought wryly. Junior sighed finally and said, “Mom, it’s one thing when he’s an asshole to me. But he was bothering Genevieve, and I couldn’t just do _nothing_.”

Betty bit back a smile as she realized what had happened. FP wasn’t dating Genevieve—not yet—but she often worked on homework with him and sometimes they went to the movies together. She was from the east side of town, which had been overrun with displaced south side residents years ago when the SoDale project was completed. It seemed like Riverdale wasn’t able to exist without a dichotomy of haves and have-nots, despite all the efforts of Betty and her friends in their teenage years.

She turned toward Pop’s, the last bastion of the past preserved for Riverdale by Veronica Lodge. FP looked over in confusion as Betty parked the car, his face turning down in a frown.

“I still want you to work on making sure that you don’t cause trouble where your father works,” Betty said sternly. “But I’m glad that you stood up for Genevieve. You’re a good person, junior. I thought you might like a milkshake.”

For a second, she thought he would scoff and look away again. Then she saw something crumble in his face, and for a second she got a glimpse of the little boy he’d been before his body had grown into young adulthood. “Thanks, Mom,” he said quietly.

She smiled and reached over, pulling him into a hug. This time, he didn’t turn away immediately. Without making it too long and embarrassing him, Betty let go and said, “I’m sure Pop Tate has some ice for those bruises, too.”


	29. Summer School

 

Jughead Jones slumped onto the couch and ran one hand through his hair–no, not _ran_ , more like _tore_. He looked up at the ceiling. Finding no answers there, he looked out the french double-doors that led to their back deck.

 _Any other day_ , he’d get up without a single complaint and quietly make his way through those doors, trying not to disturb the angel that let him live in her house and sleep in her bed. She was sipping a cup of iced tea as she frowned at the screen of her laptop, moving her hand every once in a while to highlight something in the document before her. Betty was just adding comments, but like everything she did, she poured herself into her work to the point that she became better than the best of all her peers and colleagues. If it was perfect, she could still find some way of making it better. Jughead was pretty sure that she had the power to make the sun shine brighter, if she wanted to.

 _Today_ , he couldn’t bring himself to join her on the deck. _Any other day_ , he would sneak up behind her, snake his arms around her, and press his lips against the perfect soft curve of her neck. She’d laugh and squirm like she was still as ticklish there as she was when she was sixteen, and they’d talk briefly before they gave themselves over to one another. Brief kisses would become decidedly less chaste, hands would wander, and he’d inevitably end up carrying her through those double doors to ravish her far from the prying eyes of Riverdale.

But that was any other day. Today, he just closed his eyes more tightly and groaned like a wounded soldier, letting his head loll toward the kitchen instead.

The sound must have alerted his goddess to his presence, because he glanced back as she quietly let herself back inside. Confusion was etched across her features–likely at his break from their usual afternoon routine–and she carefully set her glass on a coaster before depositing her laptop beside it.

Betty alighted on the couch at his side, one hand reaching out and smoothing over his forehead. “Are you okay, Jug?” she asked, her brows drawing together with concern.

He groaned again, shifting under her hand, straightening as much as his battered soul would allow. Meeting her gorgeous, ethereal, worrying green eyes, he forced himself to utter a few words and clue her in to the cause of his personal hell.

“Summer school,” he managed to rasp. He coughed a little to clear his throat, quite pitifully, and then tried again. “They’re making me…teach summer school. Betty, I’ll die. I can’t do it. I can’t grade another paper…my hand will fall off my arm.”

As understanding dawned on her face, a gamut of emotions passed over her. Jughead, having known Betty since they were children, understood her emotions quite intimately and found that he tended to accurately interpret her expressions. First, a flicker of understanding softened her face as she realized exactly what he was complaining about. Then, amusement. It was chased by a chastising look, which smoothed out into a sort of frown. Jughead didn’t like it when his bride frowned–he made it a personal goal every day to bring a smile to her face.

Feeling like he’d hurt her in some way, he groaned again and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against her arm this time. Betty shifted. She reached out and caught his chin in her fingers, drawing her gaze up until he met her eyes again.

“Is that all?” she asked, her tongue clicking. He didn’t even think that she realized she’d done it. Jughead’s spirits sank even lower–she must have been really irritated, if she was absently tsk-ing him. “You big baby, it’s just work. Most people do it the entire year, in case you forgot.”

In defense of himself, he held up his writing hand so that she could see the side. Her eyes flicked to his permanently red-tinted skin, then back to his face. There–he could see that she was biting back a smile when she tucked the edge of her lip between her teeth. So she wasn’t angry, per say, but she obviously wasn’t on his side, either. “I was hoping to get some of my own writing done, actually. Even though RIverdale High is on the Northwest side, they’re paying old Southside wages.” But she knew that, of course.

Betty rolled her eyes and leaned forward until she could kiss the edge of his jaw, her body curling against his automatically, easily finding the places where they comfortably fit together. He felt himself responding to her immediately. When she nipped his skin with her teeth, blood went rushing south.

“Well, I work all summer. Excuse me if I’m not too sympathetic,” she purred against his skin, turning her lips toward his ear, draining all reasonable thoughts out of his mind.

Jughead answered by pulling her onto his lap and adjusting his hips so that he could press up against her–letting her know _exactly_ how she’d affected him. In response, Betty cupped his face in her hands and slid her lips against his, drawing his lower lip between her teeth and biting him– _hard_. He moaned, entirely differently than he’d been grousing before, and his hands slid below the hem of her shirt.

She caught his wrists, smiling against his lips.

“Betty,” he whined. Didn’t she understand that he’d had a terrible day, and this might be one of the _only_ highlights before the clock marched onward to tomorrow?

The love of his life tsked again. “ _C’est la vie, mon amour,_ ” she said, shaking her head. “And if I hear any more grumbling or complaining out of you, then you’ll have to fend for yourself for dinner. Don’t bother calling Archie, either. He’s on a cleanse right now, and we all know how pitiful you were when I made you drink that kale smoothie.”

Jughead gaped up at her, scarcely believing the _trash_ that was spilling from her perfect mouth. Personally affronted, he scoffed. “My body is a well oiled machine running on hamburger grease, Betty. We established this and you swore that we’d never mention that dirty word in our house again. Whatever Archie chooses to subject himself to, it’s none of my business.”

She bumped her nose against his, trying to hold back a smirk and failing. As her lips twisted, she said, “I mean it, Mr. Jones. I’m not going to listen to you complain for ten weeks. For both of us, you had better let it go now that you’ve gotten it out of your system.”

He weighed his options, even as his hands twisted out of her grip and slid over her pleasantly soft rear. Betty shifted over him, reminding a particular bit of his anatomy of what was at stake in this conversation. It was one thing for her to threaten him with food–but food and sex at the same time? Jughead was the first to admit that Betty knew exactly how to control him.

He sighed sufferingly, pitifully, and stroked his thumbs over the curve of her hips. “I promise,” he grumbled. “I’ll do it, and I won’t complain. But know that I’ve agreed to this under extreme duress,” he pointed out, narrowing his eyes. “And I’ll be dying on the inside the whole time, so please don’t forget, since you won’t let me remind you.”

Betty’s lips really curled up then, a smile breaking across her face at his dramatic oration. With a little roll of her hips, she slid her hands around the back of his neck and clasped them together. It gave her the leverage to draw herself up. Jughead had the immediate impulse to pull her hips back down, lifting himself to meet her. Betty gasped, gratifying him, and reached to one side to unzip her skirt.

After she’d made love to him, deep and slow, right there on the couch, she pressed her forehead against his and met his eyes with a smile. “It will be too bad you won’t be around here all summer to keep me satisfied like that,” she teased. Before he could dramatically respond to that statement, Betty quickly added, “But I do have a surprise for you. I was going to tell you on your first day off, but since it seems like that won’t be until the weekend…”

Jughead raised his eyebrows. Naked, sweaty, and too warm beneath his wife, he’d thought that he might be able to restrain his curiosity. But he was a simple creature, when it came down to it, and he said, “What is it?” with more excitement than a grown man should express when teased with a mysterious surprise.

Betty grinned. “We’re flying out to San Francisco over the weekend of the fourth. We have an oceanfront suite, right on the beach. You and I can lay in the sand and watch fireworks after the sunset.”

Mentally, he raced over the school calendar. Jughead recalled seeing a week’s recess around the beginning of July. If it turned out that Betty’s surprise vacation fell on days when he was supposed to be teaching, then the school would just have to get a substitute. It was inhumane to expect someone to work two years back to back without a break, right?

“That sounds almost perfect,” he replied to her statement, reaching up to tug a lock of her hair. Betty tilted her head, like an adorable confused puppy, and Jughead added, “The only thing it’s missing is food. Well, two things. My _favorite_ things.”

She laughed lightly. “The room has a private hot tub,” she revealed. “And room service will be fulfilled by several local Michelin-rated restaurants. I think you’ll get plenty of both.”

He smiled finally in return. Maybe, thanks to the best wife in the history of marriage, his summer wouldn’t be so torturous after all.


	30. Camp Bughead

 

With a fall birthday, Jughead had always been one of the oldest kids in his class throughout school. That was why he thought nothing of it when the summer of his third year of college rolled around and he stocked up on beer on his way up to the campground. He’d turned 21 months before, and it didn’t even occur to him that none of the other staff members would be drinking age yet. Jughead had been working as a camp counselor here since his freshman year of college. He’d been sent as a camper years before, when he was identified as a _troubled youth_ himself. Even though he was majoring in creative writing, it felt good to return every summer to the campground that had kept him out of juvie.

 

Plus, there was Betty.

 

They’d met when Jughead drove up to the campground for an early spring interview. He knew the administrators from his time as a camper, but they requested that he complete the process as a formality. As he sat in the hallway outside Ranger Joan’s office, the door at the end of the hall opened and a girl he’d never seen before slipped through.

 

Her soft blonde hair was curling at the ends, pulled back from her face in a prim ponytail. Green eyes that looked like they’d light up whenever she laughed scanned the empty cafeteria, pausing on the chairs outside the office. Jughead glanced to his side. Apart from the chair he sat in, there was only one other, and it was just inches away from his. The girl flashed him a light smile as she crossed the large room. Jughead smiled back, not wanting her to feel uneasy about sitting near him, even though he felt utterly uneasy about being so close to her. She looked like the sort of girl that you fell in love with, and that terrified him more than the interview.

 

They ended up being assigned to counseling duty, on the girls’ and boys’ sides respectively. When June 1st rolled around that first year, Jughead pulled into his parking spot in the staff lot with his heart leaping into his throat at the thought of seeing Betty again.

 

Of course, by the end of the week he knew almost everything about her.

 

As they lead their campers on small survival hikes through the woods, gathered around campfires, ate in the cafeteria, and mentored whatever conflicts arose amongst the kids, they ended up spending more and more time together. On Thursday morning, when his boys were fishing on the lake, Betty approached him cautiously and asked what he might do for the staff variety show on Friday. Ranger Joan had put her in charge of the event, she revealed.

 

Jughead smiled easily and offered to play the guitar. “But I have an awful singing voice,” he cautioned. “Acoustic guitar will get boring pretty fast if no one is singing, and it definitely won’t be me.”

 

“I’ll sing,” Betty offered quickly. “That takes care of my bit, too. I wasn’t sure what I could do for a talent show...I’m sure the kids don’t want to watch me organize notes or read a book, and that sort of thing is all I’m good at.”

 

She was self-depreciating, but he knew firsthand that Betty was good at many things other than academia. For one, she’d figured out how to work the ancient staff laundry machines by just _looking_ at them, and Jughead had been trying to solve that mystery since Monday afternoon.

 

So it became a regular thing, him playing the guitar and Betty singing along. She always sang on key, and it seemed like they had similar tastes in music because she seemed to know most of the lyrics to every song he’d ever memorized. The campers tended to sing along to the songs they knew, so Betty and Jughead’s act ended up as the final routine for the staff variety show every week. As time passed, Jughead got more and more comfortable playing in front of the campers. He started bringing his guitar along to campfires, too. The best nights were the ones when Betty slid up to his side, her leg pressed against his, leading the campers in a sing-along.

 

Halfway through their first summer, Jughead suggested that they might do a few of the songs with hand motions at the campfires. Betty’s eyebrows rose, her head tilting to the side with curiosity, and he remembered suddenly that she’d never camped here before. Of course, Betty wasn’t ever a _troubled youth_. He didn’t think she’d ever done a single thing wrong in her life.

 

So Jughead ended up butchering the lyrics of a few songs he remembered from his time as a camper, gesturing along the way that his counselors had taught him, trying not to evaporate from embarrassment at the amused glint in her eye. Betty bit her lower lip, clearly trying not to laugh at him. But she learned the songs, and from then on their campfires were augmented with dancing, too.

 

When the first summer drew to a close, Jughead realized that he wouldn’t be spending every day in the presence of Betty Cooper. He’d have to return to campus, where he’d drag himself to general education courses that he didn’t particularly care about, or writing workshops where classmates tore apart his drafts like starved bloodhounds. After a summer of pleasant weather, watching Betty’s ponytail bob as she cut across the campground to the staff building, feeling her leg pressed up against his as they sang around the campfire, Jughead realized that he hadn’t been considering what it would be like to return to regular life at all. He couldn’t imagine passing his days without Betty in them--it felt like a sort of purgatory, being sent home, waiting a whole school year before he got to see her again.

 

Anxiously, their final night at camp, he asked whether she was coming back the following year.

 

Betty looked at him with an unreadable expression, her eyes tracing over his face in a way that made his heart jolt painfully against his ribs. Without hesitation, she said, “Of course, Juggie.” Then, with a bit of a worried look, she added, “Aren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” he said, unable to keep himself from smiling foolishly as he realized that it would only be a few months before he saw her again. To make sure it didn’t get too awkward, he said, “Have a good school year, Betts. I’ll see you next summer.”

 

And he did see her the next summer--looking even more beautiful than he remembered. Their first campfire, he hesitantly got out his guitar, and her face lit up like the sun had risen. It seemed like everything would return to the way it had been the year before.

 

Except...except, that year, there was a new addition to the staff.

 

Archie Andrews must have been descended directly from Apollo. He was muscular, friendly, loyal, and it seemed like there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. Archie played the guitar, too--and Jughead was the first to admit that he did it a hell of a lot better. He even wrote his own songs, his voice crooning pleasantly over his strumming.

 

It hurt worse than anything he’d experienced in his life to watch Betty fall in love with him.

 

Jughead realized that he was being sour, of course. It was like someone had reached into his body, found the dial that controlled his sarcasm, and cranked it beyond max. When Betty asked if he would mind moving his bit earlier in the staff variety show so that Archie could be the final number, Jughead couldn’t help himself from snapping, “Sure. That’s fine. I’ll just weave a basket, instead.”

 

Betty frowned, taken aback by his hostility. “It’s fine if you don’t want to, Jug. Archie can go earlier, no big deal.”

 

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine, Betty. I’ll think of something else to do.”

 

He’d said it bitterly, so that the conversation would end, but Jughead realized in a panic later that he had utterly no talents. Aside from being able to eat double his own weight in food--a talent born from hungry nights in front of an empty fridge at home as a kid--playing guitar semi-passably was his only other demonstrable skill.

 

The only thing that could have made that first variety show any worse was watching Archie catch Betty around the waist as they finished singing together, pull her close to himself, and then kiss her soundly on the lips. From his vantage point at the back of the hall, Jughead saw every single horrible second of it. He noticed the way that Betty tensed at first, like her body was automatically prepared for defense. Then he saw the moment that she melted, tension rolling away from her, those green eyes glittering as if Archie had told her the best joke in the world. She was _happy_ about it, and Jughead could feel his soul leaving his body as he recognized that.

 

One of the returning campers turned around and looked directly at him. “Uh, Jughead? Isn’t Betty your girl?” the kid asked, frowning.

 

He looked down in confusion at the teenager, the _troubled youth_ , and then glanced back up at Betty. “No,” he said shortly, not wanting this kid to see how upset he was at this turn of events. But kids are perceptive, and the camper rolled his eyes.

 

“Anyone could see the two of you were in love last summer. What happened? Did you cheat on her?” The camper pressed.

 

Jughead narrowed his eyes at the kid. “We were never together,” he snapped. “Betty is just a good friend.”

 

That second summer was the summer from hell. Watching Betty and Archie sneak away to swim in the lake in the middle of the night, leaving Jughead and Veronica alone in the campground to monitor all the campers, he felt like some sort of god was angry with him and this was a divine punishment. Jughead seriously considered throwing in the towel and looking for a different job for next year. If he had to keep watching as Betty threw herself at that ginger superhuman, he was going to gouge out his own eyes. The worst thing was that it was impossible to _hate_ Archie. He was just too warm-hearted for that.

 

So Jughead could only suffer in silence, plastering the facsimile of a friendly smile over his face as he and Archie took the kids hiking. Archie was a genuinely good guy, Jughead realized early in the summer. He was a far better camp counselor, the sort of person who seemed naturally cut out for this sort of work. Jughead, by comparison, was a pale, skinny, brooding anomaly.

 

Then, the last week of camp, it happened. Jughead was on his way to the staff laundry when he practically ran head-first into Betty. One glance was all it took to see that something was terribly, horribly wrong. Her beautiful eyes were rimmed with red and too wet, like she’d just been crying. Immediately, he saw that her lower lip was bloody too. Knowing Betty, she’d probably bitten it too hard. Jughead’s lungs froze, his heart beating a mile a minute, and he automatically reached out to touch her arm in concern.

 

“Betts--what happened?” he asked.

 

She stepped forward, pressing herself against his chest, her cheek pillowed over his heart. Jughead was frozen for a moment, stunned, but then his arms instinctually closed around her. It was like, since he’d been dreaming of holding her the entire summer, his muscle memory took over and knew exactly what to do. He smoothed a hand over her hair, the shake of her shoulders telling him that she was crying.

 

When she mumbled an answer to his question, it was too quiet the first time and he didn’t quite hear it. Betty looked up and sighed, not moving away from his grasp, and repeated, “Archie--and _Veronica_.”

 

Oh. Jughead understood instantly what had happened. He’d seen the brown-haired minx eying Archie from across the campfire. She’d looked away whenever Betty and Archie had kissed with similar pain to what Jughead had been feeling all summer. It wasn’t hard for one broken heart to recognize another.

 

Irritation flared up within him as he came to the realization that Archie had cheated on Betty, and that was why she was crying now. What an utter idiot, he thought. Anyone who had captured Betty’s heart and thrown it away like that wasn’t worthy of her tears. He smoothed his hand over her hair again, looking down and meeting her teary green eyes, his heart pounding so hard that he was sure she must be able to hear it.

 

“He’s the scum of the earth, Betts,” Jughead said, and he’d never uttered a more heartfelt statement in his life.

 

She glanced away, sighing again. “I agree with you, right now. But he’s such a nice guy, it just hurts so much. I’m not sure that I can be around him any more, and I was planning to come back next summer.”

 

Jughead’s heart twisted painfully in his chest. If Archie Andrews was the reason that Betty didn’t come back to work next summer, Jughead was fairly certain that he could reasonably stage a Night of the Living Dead murder out in the woods and rip his unfaithful heart out of his chest with his bare hands. Even when he was a _troubled youth_ , he’d never been inclined to hurt anyone the way he wanted to pummel Archie right now.

 

“I’ll be here.”

 

The words stole out of his mouth before he could stop them. Jughead froze, hardly able to believe that he’d said what he was thinking out loud. He looked down at Betty, anxiously awaiting her reaction.

 

She sniffled-- _adorably_ \--and her lips turned up in the ghost of a smile. Softly, she said, “I have to come back, then.”

 

It wasn’t right, just leaving her to suffer through her heartbreak alone, though. Before he lost the nerve, Jughead pulled a pen from his pocket and said, “I hate seeing you so upset. I know we aren’t the closest friends, but if you wanted to call when you’re back at school, I’m always here to listen.”

 

Betty’s eyes searched his face for a moment. In that instant, Jughead cursed himself for overstepping whatever invisible lines existed between them. But then she held out her hand, letting him write the ten digits that would connect her to him across her palm. She closed her fingers around the numbers and really did smile, then.

 

“You might regret that offer,” she said. “I’m pretty chatty when I’m walking to class.”

 

He didn’t regret it. Not even a little. For a few weeks after they returned from camp, there was total radio silence from Betty. Jughead worried that she might have washed his number off her hand, or maybe some of the digits had gotten smeared and she’d been calling the wrong number. His roommates joked that he had come back from the summer looking even more haunted than usual--Jughead took to obsessively brooding over his phone, closing himself in his room and ignoring the rest of the apartment.

 

It wasn’t until his birthday came around that October--his _twenty-first_ birthday, one of the final milestones of his youth--that his roommates finally dragged him out. Sweet Pea caught him in a headlock the moment he returned from his literature class, making him drop his backpack in surprise. To his shame, Fangs placed a yellow cardboard crown on his head that said _birthday boy_. “Get your wallet, Edgar Allan Poe. We’re going out tonight, and you’re having a drink.”

 

It was futile to fight them, especially since they were evidently prepared. Jughead let himself be lead out to a bar, where Sweet Pea promptly ordered him a shot of whiskey. He was through his fourth shot of the evening when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Jughead slid it out and glanced down at the number, seeing that he didn’t know the caller.

 

Out of habit, he slid the answer button, raising the phone to his ear.

 

“Hello? Is this Jughead?”

 

Her voice was like a drink of cold water, pouring through his ear and flooding his entire body. He straightened on his stool, feeling the color drain from his face, hardly daring to believe that she’d called after all these weeks.

 

“Betty?” he almost whispered, his voice cracking from the whiskey. Clearing his throat, he repeated her name a little more loudly so that she could hear him over the noise of the bar.

 

When she replied, he could hear the smile in her voice. “I just wanted to call and say happy birthday,” she said.

 

He automatically replied, “Thanks.” Then, perhaps because of the drinks, he added, “I miss you.”

 

She laughed a little, her voice even warmer when she answered, “I miss you too. Have fun tonight, and drink a lot of water.”

 

Though his night out with his roommates would live forever in infamy, Jughead’s best memory from the evening was that first call from Betty. After that, it was like the floodgates were opened. They talked on the phone at least once a day, sometimes twice, usually for hours. Sometimes, they would talk so late into the night that she’d fall asleep on the other end, and he’d wait a few minutes before hanging up.

 

Thus, as he drove to camp with a trunk full of beer, he had high hopes that his third summer would be infinitely better than the last. He’d patch things up with Archie--the last things Jughead had said to him after consoling Betty had not been very friendly--and he’d finally get to spend time with Betty again.

 

Arriving at camp that summer was like coming home. He looked over the familiar cabins, eyes recognizing that picnic tables needed to be fixed and debris from the winter storms needed to be cleared away before campers arrived. As he parked in the staff lot and pulled his bag out of the back seat, another car pulled up beside him.

 

Betty lowered her sunglasses and gave him a once-over, a teasing smile passing over her face. “Jughead Jones,” she said warmly. “It's good to see you.”

 

He didn’t hesitate this time to set his back back down, lean over the door of her car, and pull her into a tight hug. “It’s good to be back,” he said, grinning.

 

And it was. They settled comfortably into the normalcy of it all, hanging out with Archie and Veronica that first night around a little campfire and catching up. Veronica complained that it had taken months to get the smell of smoke out of her clothes, but Betty admitted that she liked the occasional reminder of their summertime job. Jughead casually opened a beer as they talked, noticing that Archie sat bolt-upright at the sound.

 

“How did you get that?” he asked pointedly.

 

Jughead frowned for a second, not understanding. Then he realized that the others must have been nearing their birthdays. “Are you all summer babies?” he asked, looking around at the girls too.

 

Betty rolled her eyes. “Did you forget that we have like three weeks of cake in July and August, Juggie? You thought that was just a special time for the campers?”

He raised his shoulders in a shrug. “I never question cake.” After a pause, he said, “Do you guys want some?”

 

Archie took a can and opened it swiftly, taking a practiced swig. Not for the first time, Jughead wondered if he was in a fraternity during the school year. Veronica peered critically at his backpack, glancing up at him. “I don’t suppose you have anything in there to make a manhattan?” she asked.

 

Jughead bit back an amused smirk. “Just PBR, princess. Sorry.”

 

He passed Betty a can, which she opened without complaint. Veronica sighed heavily and took one too, carefully fitting her fingernails beneath the tab before giving up and holding it out to Archie. Betty gingerly sipped at her beverage and said, “I guess we can have some fun before the campers get here. And at the end of the summer, we can have a real party.”

 

“The end?” Archie repeated, frowning. “Why wait until the end? You only turn 21 once, Betty.”

 

She rolled her eyes a little, looking over at Jughead. “Tell him,” she said, asking for backup.

 

Jughead took a long drink of his beer instead, staying out of it.

 

After they’d finished their first cans, Jughead and Archie chivalrously shared the remaining two cans with the girls. The four of them went stumbling back to the campgrounds together after they put out the campfire, only slightly buzzed. Veronica resolutely clung to Archie’s arm, sometimes glancing over at Betty as if to silently warn her to keep her distance. Jughead saw Betty worry her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment before she linked her arm through his, glancing up at him with a smile. From what she’d said during the school year, she was completely over Archie Andrews. Still, he knew that it must have been difficult for her to see her friend draped over her ex like that.

 

So when Veronica and Archie veered sharply toward the boys side of camp together, Jughead tugged Betty in the direction of her own cabin. “We can play that game too,” he said, his voice sounding a little huskier than he intended. Before he could die of embarrassment, Betty gave him a coy smile.

 

“Just before the campers get here,” she repeated, echoing her statement from earlier.

 

Though they only kissed that night, Jughead got to fall asleep with Betty in his arms. Their camp beds were definitely meant for a single sleeper, so the two of them were forced to cocoon together in the limited space so that they didn’t fall off the bed and hit the floor. Jughead wasn’t complaining, though.

 

As the first bus of campers unloaded the next day, his eyes picked out the returning campers from the new ones. Betty was doling out cabin assignments, sending kids trudging toward the campgrounds with their bags in hand. As Jughead directed boys toward their cabins and indicated the imaginary divide between the gendered sides, he caught her casting a few smiles in his direction. Maybe it was just his imagination running wild after the night they’d shared together, but he hoped that those looks were meant for him.

 

He regarded his campers with a critical eye after they’d chosen bunks and unloaded some of their stuff. Jughead collected the electronics into a bucket at the front of the cabin, despite the complaints from the kids. He sympathized, remembering how it felt like one of his organs was being removed from his body when his counselor had removed his portable CD player years before, but rules were rules. Once he gave his little speech introducing himself and setting some of the behavioral expectations, he let the kids briefly introduce themselves. Later, there would be whole-camp icebreaker games.

 

Before they left the cabin, one of the boys approached Jughead. He recognized the camper from years past--and, as the kid spoke, realized with some trepidation that this was the boy who had noticed Jughead’s pain the summer before. “Don’t worry this year, J. We’ve got you,” the camper said.

 

Jughead frowned at the somewhat ominous reassurance. “Uh...okay, buddy. Let’s head down to the field with everybody, okay?”

 

He watched the camper talking quietly with the other boys for the rest of the night. It wouldn’t have bothered him, but Jughead could have sworn that they kept looking over at him with conspiratory gazes. Then--they started talking to the girls.

 

Jughead sidled over to Betty between a game of name toss and bippity boppity boo. “Have you noticed that our campers seem to be doing something?”

 

She quirked an eyebrow. “Of course,” she said. But before they could talk any more, Archie started to explain the rules for the second game.

 

“So one person is it, and that person walks up to anyone they want in the circle. They can say you, right, or left, and the person in front of them has to say that name before the one who’s it can say bippity boppity boo. Let Veronica, Jughead, Betty, and I show you.”

 

They ran over quickly, taking their spots cross-legged in the center of the camper circle on either side of Veronica. Archie walked directly up to her, his steps exaggerated for the benefit of the onlooking campers, and said, “Right!”

 

Veronica quickly spat, “Betty!” as Archie began to say the magic words.

 

He held up his hands. “She got me,” he said, for the benefit of the campers. Betty and Veronica switched places, and Jughead thought nothing of it as Betty’s shoulder bumped against his arm. Archie walked up to Betty, now in the middle, and said, “Left!”

 

Before Betty could say _Jughead_ , Archie finished saying the magic words. She groaned in exaggeration, climbing to her feet. Archie took her spot, as Betty said, “Now I’m it. Any questions?”

 

The campers shook their heads. Betty started off as _it_ , quickly finding a camper that switched places with her. From across the circle, Jughead saw the camper at her side lean over and say something to her. Maddeningly, Betty glanced in _his_ direction and blushed, then shook her head in response to the kid.

 

He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was starting to get anxious about whatever these _troubled youth_ had planned. They played until the campers seemed to get tired of the game, judging by the way they were talking quietly amongst themselves and accurately stating one another’s names. Jughead pushed himself to his feet. It was time for his icebreaker.

 

“Okay, that’s enough of that Disney nonsense. Thanks, Archie,” he said with a tinge of sarcasm, shooting a smile at the other counselor. Jughead explained, “It’s time for my favorite game-- _it could be worse_ . I’ll say something, and then the person next to me says, _It could be worse, you could have…_ It’s easy, if you’re good at making things up. Each thing you say has to be worse than the thing before, so we’ll start small and then get big. The key is to keep it going quickly around the circle. Let’s see if we can make it all the way back around to me.”

 

The campers nodded in understanding, sixty pairs of eyes turned toward him in anticipation. Jughead caught Betty’s gaze, took a deep breath, and said, “I forgot my toothbrush.”

 

The camper at his side immediately quipped, “It could be worse! You could have forgot your underwear”

 

When it got around to Veronica, she said, “It could be worse, you could have failed your classes.”

 

A few campers later, Betty said, “It could be worse. You could have lost an important phone number.”

 

Whatever the next camper said was lost in the rush that filled Jughead’s ears. He laughed lightly, letting her know that he understood. Betty smiled brightly toward him, her eyes flicking over to Archie as he said, “It could be worse. You could have gotten lost in the woods.”

 

The chain continued, until the camper at Jughead’s side said, “It could be worse. Someone else could have kissed your girl.”

 

He looked sharply over at the camper, automatically reacting to the turn the game had taken. The danger of his favorite ice breaker was that the campers could quickly spin it into a realm of inappropriate conversation--but as he met the camper’s eyes, he noticed that it was one of the boys from his cabin. Had this kid been here the year before? He couldn’t remember.

 

“It could be worse, that person might have been a zombie,” Jughead quipped, finishing the game. Several kids around the circle were grinning too widely at him, and he wondered again what they were planning. Luckily, by that point the sun had set. The counselors rounded up their campers and lead them back to their cabins. Jughead ran through their highs and lows with them before announcing that it was lights out. He lay in bed, distinctly Bettyless, and listened to the kids whisper amongst themselves.

 

The following day, they’d planned a nature hike after dinner to be followed by a survival camp-out. Archie and Veronica had chosen to hike towards the beach with their kids, surprising none of the staff. Jughead and Betty decided to head toward the hills instead. They divided and walked in opposite directions, both groups of campers disappearing into the woods.

 

As they walked, the kids talked amongst themselves. Everyone seemed to be getting along this year, so far. Usually, at this point in the week, Jughead would have dealt with at least one camper conflict. He wondered if, like he had at their age, they appreciated being treated like normal kids for once rather than timebombs. At least here no one was analyzing them or anticipating what sort of unacceptable behavior they were going to exhibit.

 

He fell into step next to Betty. She glanced over, her blonde ponytail swinging, her lilac tank top accentuating the hue of her eyes. Jughead couldn’t help noticing that she’d hooked her water bottle to her belt, and it was tugging her jean shorts low across her hips as they walked. He looked away, visually counting their kids again, estimating which way they should go to reach the first hill. Jughead was carrying the pack of supplies, which included their emergency medical equipment, mylar blankets, flashlights, rations, and water. It was weighing heavily on his back as he hiked, but he didn’t complain. If he didn’t carry it, then Betty would have to.

 

Once they reached the first hill, Jughead lead the boys onward to the second. They had to cross a small creek to get there. The water was hardly more than a trickle across the ground, easy enough for even the smallest of the boys to step completely over. Before they walked any further, Jughead pointed to the creek.

 

“This is our invisible wall for tonight, guys. If you try to cross it and bother the girls, I’ll tell them you were eaten by a bear when we get back.”

 

One of the kids looked at him critically. “Why would you say that?” he asked.

 

A returning camper elbowed him. “J’s threatening to kill you,” he snickered.

 

As the kids built a shelter, Jughead glanced over to see how Betty was doing. The girls were picking up kindling for a campfire. She walked toward the creek, smiling at him, and before he realized what was happening Jughead was walking to meet her. Sleep in the same bed one night with the girl, and it was like his body had been enchanted.

 

She glanced over her shoulder. “Looks like it’s going to be an easy night,” Betty observed. “These kids are on top of things.”

 

Jughead nodded, glancing over at the boys as they finished weaving branches through their makeshift shelter. One of the kids brandished a sharp stick at another, and he shot Betty an apologetic look. Jogging over, he broke up their play-fighting and instructed the boys to start finding kindling.

 

As he lay down to sleep that night, his head pillowed on a rolled up sweater, he wondered if the shelters he’d built as a kid were still out there in the woods somewhere. It was getting harder and harder to hike to clearings where there wasn’t any evidence of previous camps. Of course, no one came behind them to tear down the branches when they returned to the cabins.

 

He first became aware that something was wrong when he opened his eyes and the woods were _silent_ . Not just quiet, like the kids were sleeping. Silent-- _like there were no kids_.

 

Jughead leaped up, visually confirming the conclusion that he’d already reached. Looking quickly over at the girls’ camp, he saw a decided lack of sleeping figures on the hill. Disregarding his own invisible wall, Jughead rushed quickly over the creek, peering into the darkness of the woods and listening for kids.

 

“Betty,” he said, catching sight of her ponytail in the dark. She was curled on her side, her head nestled onto her boots. Jughead reached out to wake her and she started at his touch. He drew back his hand, letting her eyes sweep over the campsite and come to the same conclusion that he had.

 

“Where did they go?” she gasped, panic lacing her voice.

 

Jughead held out a hand to help her up, letting her brace herself against his arm as she slipped her boots back on. “I woke up and there was no sign of them. This must have been what they were talking about the other night.”

 

Betty’s eyes were huge in the dark. “What if they got lost, Jug? We have to look for them.”

 

He nodded in full agreement, turning and jogging back to his campsite to grab the bag of supplies. But as he gazed into the shelter, he quickly realized that the backpack was gone, too.

 

He rejoined Betty. She was crouched over some footprints in the mud, squinting as if she could spontaneously develop night vision. “They took the supplies,” he told her.

 

“Shit,” Betty said softly, the curse word sounding foreign falling from her lips. He knew from experience that she didn’t swear often, based on their regular phone calls. “At least they have stuff if they get hurt. Technically, they have a compass too. They should be able to get back to camp, but we still need to look for them.”

 

“We shouldn’t split up,” he stated. “Do you want to go back to the cabins first and see if they made it there, or should we try to find them now?”

 

Betty huffed and pushed herself up from the ground, placing her hands on her hips. “They can’t have gotten far. I feel like we were only asleep a few minutes.”

 

Jughead glanced up at the moon, which was thankfully nearly full, and back down at her. “I think it was more than a few minutes, love,” he said. The word slipped out naturally. Betty blinked up at him in the moonlight, surprised.

 

She smiled a little, easing the beating of his heart. “I suppose we can’t hear them,” she mused. “Let’s head toward the cabins, first. We should probably call Ranger Joan and let her know that the kids are in the woods.”

 

He felt a distinct and looming dread at that prospect. She’d been a scary lady when he was a kid, and nothing had changed now. Letting her know that they’d lost 30 campers in the woods felt like putting the signature on his termination papers. Jughead hoped that the kids were just playing a prank, and they’d find them before they had to resort to any drastic measures.

 

Like an answer to his prayers, a branch snapped nearby. Betty jumped, her shoulder pressing against his chest unconsciously as she took a step closer to him. Peering into the darkness, Jughead listened for giggling.

 

When none came, he said quietly, “I think we should get moving.”

 

Betty nodded in fervent agreement and began marching toward camp.

 

They hadn’t gotten very far when Jughead tripped over some unseen root. His ankle ignited as he plunged forward in the darkness, foot twisting in a way that no foot was meant to twist. As he hit the ground, he already knew that he’d done a number on himself.

 

Betty knelt at his side, her huge eyes peering at him in the moonlight, and she held out a hand. Jughead shook his head, reaching down to free his shoe from the roots and gingerly feel his ankle.

 

Even brushing his fingers over the rapidly swelling skin put him in immense pain. He inhaled sharply, looking up and meeting Betty’s eyes again. “I don’t think I can walk on this,” he said through gritted teeth. “Go back to camp and call Ranger Joan.”

 

Betty reached out and felt his ankle, too, her fingers feather-light and icy against his inflamed skin. She frowned. “I’m not leaving you to get eaten by a bear, Juggie.”

 

He snorted and said in an attempt at humor, “Just the kids, then?”

 

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she rolled her eyes. “You can lean on me and I’ll get you back to camp. Otherwise we’ll never find you if I leave you here.”

 

Jughead gently applied a little pressure to his foot and grimaced at the immediate answering pain that felt like it flared up his entire leg. “I can yell really loud,” he tried, but Betty had already maneuvered so that her shoulders were under his arm on his bad side.

 

“You can show me your talents later,” she said dryly, pushing upward. Jughead shifted all of his weight onto his other foot, careful to hold his twisted ankle up off the ground. He leaned on Betty a little more than he thought was gentleman-like, but these were desperate times.

 

They shuffled onward much more slowly. After what felt like forever, the electric lights surrounding the camp began to glow through the trees like a homing beacon. Both counselors automatically moved toward it without conversation.

 

As soon as they broke the perimeter of the camp, Betty helped Jughead limp to a picnic table and eased him down. She sprinted to the door of her cabin, emerging almost instantly and running over to his. Jughead wished he could have helped her. Betty jogged back to his table and caught her breath.

 

“They’re there,” she confirmed, gasping. “Now...I’m going to call you an ambulance.”

 

Jughead shook his head, years of his dangerous and poverty-stricken home life ingrained in his subconscious, telling them that he absolutely should never call an ambulance under any circumstances. Betty arched an eyebrow and crouched down by his wounded ankle, lifting the hem of his jeans to see it in the electric light. From the color that spread over her face, Jughead guessed that it wasn’t good.

 

“Fine,” he said, before she could argue with him. “But tell them no sirens, we don’t need all the campers watching.”

 

Betty let herself into the staff building to use the phone, but she returned a few minutes later. “There’s one on the way. I’ll fill out an injury report in the morning. Should I run down to the beach and tell Archie and Veronica what happened?”

 

He glanced at the other two cabins. “I don’t know, are their kids back here, too?” Before she could run and check, Jughead reached out and caught her wrist. He tugged her towards him, admitting, “I don’t like doctors, Betts. If you don’t mind staying with me…”

 

A shy smile spread over her face before she sat down next to him and tucked herself against his side. Her hand reached up and ran gently along the side of his face, turning his head just enough that she could press her lips against his. Twisted ankle and all, Jughead couldn’t stop a foolish grin from lighting up his face, too. It looked like this summer was going to be a good one, after all.

 


	31. Summer lovin

 

 _Love is a many splendored thing_ _  
_ _It's the April rose that only grows in the early Spring_ _  
_ _Love is nature's way of giving a reason to be living_   
The golden crown that makes a man a king

 

When Betty’s parents informed her that she was going to travel to her grandparents’ house for the summer, she packed her best sundresses and all the swimsuits she owned. Grandma and grandpa had a home on the west coast, and Betty fully intended to spend her summer reading at the beach. One flight later, she was holding her sunhat to her head with one hand and squinting into the sunlight in search of her grandfather’s car.

 

Grandma and grandpa were happy to see her, of course, but they understood when she packed her tote bag and promised that she wouldn’t be gone more than a few hours. Betty walked the short distance to the public beach, pausing at the boardwalk to look around and decide where the best place would be to read uninterrupted.

 

Other than a single motorcycle parked nearby, it looked like everyone else was still working on breakfast. A long way down the beach, a few people were surfing in wetsuits. Betty noticed that the motorcycle’s rider was sitting near the waves, looking out at the horizon. She walked into the sand, kicking off her shoes and letting her toes slip amongst the grains, walking a polite distance from the motorcycle rider to spread out her towel.

 

She’d just finished rubbing sunscreen over her arms and legs when a shadow moved over her towel. Betty held her hat with one hand and looked up.

 

The only other nearby occupant of the beach stood there, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, a lock of dark hair falling over his eyes. He was wearing a white tank top, his shoulders hunched forward as if he were embarrassed, and Betty could see the edges of a tattoo on his upper bicep. Since the sun was shining behind him, it was a little difficult to make out the precise features of his face, but Betty got the impression of kind eyes. She smiled in greeting, trying to put him at ease.

 

“I, uh...I was wondering if you had any extra sunscreen,” he muttered. “Sorry, I know that’s really random, and I’m a complete stranger, but I swear I’m not going to kill you or rob you or anything, I can just already feel myself burning and my wallet is at home, and--”

 

She interrupted the torrent of words with a simple, “Sure.” Betty filled her palm with enough lotion to cover her chest and neck, then held out the bottle. “I just got this, there’s plenty.”

 

He dropped into the sand at her side, squeezing sunscreen onto his tattoo (which she was close enough to determine was a twisting snake), and then rubbed lotion over the rest of his shoulders and arms almost like an afterthought.

 

“Thanks,” he said, smiling. From this angle, she could see that he wasn’t bad looking, at all. Betty wasn’t exactly boy crazy (actually, she’d never even been kissed) but she wasn’t blind, either.

 

She took the sunscreen back as he held it out to her. “I’m Betty,” she said.

 

He smiled, and it reached his eyes. “People call me Jughead,” he replied.

 

Betty tilted her head a little. “Okay,” she said. “Is that your motorcycle?”

 

“It used to be my dad’s. Kind of retro, right?”

 

She nodded in agreement. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle. Isn’t it terrifying, around big cars?”

 

Jughead laughed a bit in response. Rather than answering her question, he said, “I take it you’re not from around here.” Betty just smiled, hoping she seemed mysterious, and he added, “I’ll take you for a ride, if you want. As long as your boyfriend won’t mind.”

 

That elicited a giggle. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said, grinning, knowing that he’d only said that to find out.

 

Her smile was infectious, and Jughead grinned back. “Well maybe we can fix that, too. How long are you in town, Betty?”

 

She pretended to think, turning her eyes toward the cloudless sky and tapping a finger against her jaw. “Just about...the whole summer,” she said. “I have to go back to New York in the fall for school.”

 

“I go back for my senior year.”

 

“Really? Are you seventeen? This is my senior year too.”

 

Jughead reached over and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, his fingers bumping the brim of her hat. “I’m seventeen,” he replied. “Betty, it’s sounding more and more like this is a match made in heaven.”

 

She bit her lip to keep herself from smiling too stupidly at that. Coyly, she replied, “If you keep saying such obvious pick-up lines, I’m going to run away screaming.”

 

They talked at the beach for hours that first day. The sun climbed higher and higher in the sky, and inevitably more and more people began to stake out their places on the beach. Jughead offered to give Betty a ride back to her grandparents’ house, but she asked him to drop her off a block away (no need to have grandma and grandpa worrying, and Jughead was such a sweet guy). He invited her to go dancing on the pier that night, and Betty enthusiastically accepted.

 

It was the first of many dates. By the end of the first week, Jughead kissed her. Betty leaned back against the rail of the pier, the last rays of the sunset casting pinks and oranges and purples across the sky around her. Jughead leaned forward and gently cupped his hand over her cheek, sliding his fingers back into her blonde hair. He tilted his head just so and pressed his lips against hers. Betty felt like her body was curling in response, one of her feet rising up behind her as she slipped her arms around his neck, a delicious warmth spreading through every inch of her being as he swiped his tongue over her lip and deepened the kiss. As far as first kisses went (in her limited and subjective experience), it was unforgettable.

 

By the fourth of July, Betty was used to throwing her leg over the back of Jughead’s bike and holding on to his torso as they cruised along Ocean Avenue. She knew that when they went to the ice cream shop at the end of the pier, he’d order chocolate and she’d get a strawberry swirl. They listened to the same music, read many of the same books, and had plenty of things to talk about.

 

But it was like the holiday was a sort of mid-point for the two of them. As the summer days marched into August, Betty thought more and more often about her upcoming flight back to New York. It was constantly at the back of her mind.

 

One of their last evenings together, they splashed around on the beach. Betty laughed as Jughead caught her, lifting her up off the sand, turning so that his body shielded hers from the ocean spray against the sea wall at the end of the beach. He kissed her and she melted in his arms, tears pricking her eyes as she realized that this might be one of the last days they had together like this. Jughead frowned a little as he pulled away, seeing from the look on her face that something was wrong. “Betty, what is it?” he asked.

 

She hated the way her voice shook as she said, “I’m just worried that I’ll never see you again.”

 

He smiled, his hands sliding over her sides and drawing her body against his. “Never worry about that, Betty. This isn’t the end...it’s just the beginning.”

 

_They think our love is just a growing pain_

_Why don't they understand, it's just a crying shame_

_Their lips are lying only real is real_

_We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel_

 

Betty didn’t say anything to her family about Jughead, but she returned from the coast with a glow about her that wasn’t just from her sun-kissed skin. She didn’t know that her parents had made some major decisions while she was gone. It felt like, as soon as she stepped off the plane, she was being inundated with information about a divorce. Polly, her older sister, was going to live with their dad in New York. Betty was packing her bags to return to California with her mom, where they’d stay with her grandparents until they could get on their feet.

 

She felt conflicted about leaving her school in her senior year, but she wasn’t going to insist on staying and send her mom to California by herself. Besides, it was bittersweet, but Betty hoped that she might cross paths with a certain dark-haired, motorcycle-riding boy again. She spent a lot of time consoling her mother in those frenzied days. As she packed up the contents of her familiar pink childhood bedroom, she cried a little herself. But Betty boarded that plane with her head held high, expecting that she’d find happiness right away in their new life.

 

Grandma and grandpa hugged her like someone had died when they arrived at the airport. Betty’s heart was hammering, her eyes flying to the window of the car whenever a motorcycle roared by. The leather-clad biker gang that ruled the area seemed to be out in full force that day, because every sighting was laced with disappointment.

 

Betty prepared for the first day at her new school meticulously, applying a soft coating of makeup, tying her hair back in a ponytail, and buttoning a thin white cardigan over her yellow sundress. She hugged her mother before her grandpa drove her to the school, promising that everything would be okay. Betty went to the office and finished filling out her enrollment paperwork.

 

A dark-haired girl named Veronica was assigned as her guide. She was the sort of person that Betty could tell would be a life-long friend, once they got to know one another better. Veronica lead her to her classes, quietly informing Betty about the natural divisions between groups of students in the school. At lunch, Veronica introduced Betty to her friends, Cheryl and Toni.

 

Cheryl looked less than impressed as she gave Betty a once-over. Then, an overly enthusiastic girl named Ethel pushed herself onto the bench at Betty’s side, talking quickly about joining the cheerleading team. Betty found herself nodding--she’d cheered at her old school, after all--and Ethel promised that they were going to be best friends.

 

Her eyes turned toward Veronica, silently asking for help, but she found the other girls laughing at her instead.

 

“So tell us about your summer,” Veronica said, trying to save her by changing the subject. “How did you like the beach?”

 

Betty couldn’t stop a huge smile from spreading over her face. “It was perfect. I met a boy,” she said.

 

_He got friendly holding my hand_

_She got friendly down in the sand_

_He was sweet just turned eighteen_

_Well she was good you know what I mean_

_Summer heat boy and girl meet but oh oh the summer nights._

 

Jughead narrowed his eyes at Sweet Pea and Fangs, wishing again that they would just leave him alone. They were in the bleachers avoiding the hordes of mindless drones that attended their school. Fangs was the only one who had brought any sort of lunch along. Ever since Betty left for New York, he’d been in a sour mood but his friends didn’t know why. Now that his dad was back in town, and the gang was riding again, Jughead wasn’t able to withdraw into the seclusion of his room and ignore everyone else. He sighed, resigned that they weren’t going to leave him alone until he told them _something_.

 

“I met a girl at the beach,” he admitted, shoving his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

 

Sweet Pea quirked an eyebrow, smiling so that his eye teeth were showing. “Did you get any?” he asked.

 

Jughead cringed inwardly at the thought of crudely ‘getting any’ with Betty. She wasn’t that sort of girl--she was the sort of girl that you loved forever, rather than adding her to your headcount. But Sweet Pea would never let him live it down if he tried to explain that, so Jughead found himself nodding and forcing a grin on his face.

 

Sweet Pea clapped a hand onto his shoulder. “I bet you broke her heart,” he grinned (as if that was a good thing).

 

Unbeknownst to Jughead, across the field a group of girls were chatting around a lunch table. As Betty gushed yet another sweet, sappy judgement of Jughead’s character, Cheryl leaned forward. “So,” she said. “Does this prince charming have a name?”

 

Betty smiled, her mind still wrapped up in kisses and hand-holding three weeks ago on the beach. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Jughead Jones.”

 

She should have noticed the way that Cheryl and Toni exchanged significant glances, or the way that Veronica’s face fell and her eyes shifted away. But Betty was still starry-eyed and wrapped up in the memories of her first love, so she didn’t. Somewhere, maybe close by, she hoped that Jughead was thinking pleasantly of her, too.

 

_Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee_

_Lousy with virginity_

_Won't go to bed_

_Till I'm legally wed_

_I can't, I'm Sandra Dee_

 

Betty’s cheerleading debut happened to be at a pep rally. As she cheered, she couldn’t help noticing that a certain red-haired football player kept watching her. She smiled and waved, but he glanced away as soon as he was caught.

 

She found Veronica, Cheryl, and Toni after she was done. They were wearing matching red jackets, so it was easy to find them in the crowd. As she approached, Cheryl’s face split into a wolf-like grin. “Betty!” she said, coming up and looping their arms together. “I have a surprise for you. Come with me.”

 

Behind them, Veronica said, “Cheryl--”

 

But then Cheryl led her to a back corner of the parking lot, where several motorcycles were parked. Betty’s heart hammered in her chest, her throat constricting, as they approached a group of leather-clad boys. Cheryl cleared her throat, making them turn.

 

And there, in the middle of them, was Jughead.

 

Betty’s heart might have flown right out of her body. “Jughead?”

 

He looked about as shocked and happy as she felt. “Betty?” he asked, automatically taking a few steps toward her. “What are you doing here?”

 

She could tell him the whole story later, she rationalized. “My mom and I moved out here at the end of the summer,” she said.

 

Jughead was smiling brightly as he said, “That’s great! That’s perfect, Betty! Wow, I--”

 

Then, he glanced over at the circle of people who were watching them.

 

Then, his eyes widened a little and the smile slid away.

 

Then, he stepped back and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

 

“That’s cool,” he muttered.

 

Betty frowned, not understanding what was happening. “Jug? Are you okay?” she asked.

 

He looked over at the others again. “Of course I’m okay. Are you okay?”

 

She shook her head, feeling a knot form in her stomach. “What’s the matter with you?”

 

Jughead’s eyes met hers for a long moment. He scoffed, turning away. “What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you, honey? I’m fine.”

 

She understood, then. Well, at least, she understood what was happening, even if she couldn’t interpret that strange and pleading look he’d given her before acting like the summer had meant nothing to him at all. Betty felt her hands curling into fists at her sides, her ears burning, her throat constricting with anger. She’d let this jerk kiss her, she’d thought that they were in love, and three weeks apart had turned him into this...this…

 

“You asshole,” she snapped, throwing one of her pom-poms at him. Betty turned on her heel, marching toward the girls that had brought her here. She was too angry to even consider how they might have contributed to this situation.

 

Veronica jogged a little to stay at her side. “Betty, uh,” she said. “We should have told you, I’m sorry. Jughead has a pretty big reputation around here. He’s always been a player, and…”

 

Betty was still too furious to think. “It’s fine, Veronica. I just want to get out of here.”

 

Veronica nodded. “We’re having a sleepover tonight at my place. That will get your mind off things.”

 

And it did. Well, sort of. Until Veronica offered her a cigarette and a swig of some wine, and Betty found herself throwing up in the bathroom. She brushed her teeth furiously, imagining that she could clean all of Jughead’s kisses out of her mouth too if she scrubbed hard enough. Bracing her hands on the vanity, she stared at herself in the mirror and tried to convince herself that he didn’t deserve her. When she felt a little bit better, Betty let herself out into the bedroom.

 

Just in time to hear Cheryl making fun of her.

 

_My head is saying fool forget him_

_My heart is saying don't let go_

_Hold on to the end, that's what I intend to do_

_I'm hopelessly devoted to you_

 

As Betty walked down the darkened, unfamiliar street, she couldn’t stop thinking about Jughead. She knew that, after tonight, she should just let things go. But she couldn’t stop thinking of his hands around her waist on the beach, his lips against hers in the sun, and the way his eyes lit up whenever she made him laugh. Objectively, she understood that this sort of thing happened all the time. It was almost a teenage cliche, right?

 

Betty sighed, looking up at the trees that ringed Veronica’s house. She caught sight of Cheryl shimmying down the drainpipe, running over to a pair of motorcycles parked in the street. For a second, her heart skipped a beat, wondering if Cheryl was going to climb on behind the dark-haired boy on the left or the taller boy on the right. But Cheryl chose the right, and Betty let out a long sigh. The motorcycles roared into the night and went in different directions.

 

She couldn’t really blame him for what happened, right? Betty was the one who had left, and Betty was the one who had unexpectedly come back. Why hadn’t she called him the moment she’d touched down in California, to let him know that she was here? Why was she waiting until she’d settled into her new school to reach out? How could she have known that it was his school, too?

 

No, she couldn’t be upset that Jughead had reacted the way that he did. But she was frustrated that he’d decided to put on a show for his friends rather than enjoying the moment of their reunion like she’d wanted to.

 

But she couldn’t let herself be with him if he didn’t value their relationship as much as she did. Betty would just have to find some way of erasing him from every corner of her mind and healing her broken heart. She’d have to get over him. People did it all the time, right?

 

_We'll get some overhead lifters and some four barrel quads_

_Oh yeah_

_(Keep talking whoa keep talking)_

_A fuel injection cutoff and chrome plated rods oh yeah_

_(I'll get the money I'll kill to get the money)_

 

Much as Jughead beat himself up over his botched reunion with Betty, he had a few other things to worry about. For one, Pea had found a car that they could restore in auto shop to secure their final credits for graduation, but it was going to cost them some money to find all the parts. For two, the Ghoulies were out of juvie again and itching to fight.

 

He looked over the car with a critical eye. They had their bikes, of course, but this was something that could serve another purpose. Just maybe, they could customize this until they could toe the line against the Ghoulies in some of their tricked-out cars. It would be a gang war without a bloodbath, which was the only kind that Jughead liked.

 

He circled the car, mentally tallying the things that needed to be fixed, formulating a plan. They’d get the money, regardless of whatever they had to do. They’d get the Ghoulies off their backs. And then, maybe, he could get Betty back.

 

With a grin, he clapped Sweet Pea on the shoulder. “It’s perfect,” he said.

 

_Sandy, can't you see I'm a misery_

_Made a start now we're apart, there's nothing left for me_

_Love has flown all alone, I sit and wonder why, oh, why?_

_You left me, oh, Sandy_

 

Jughead walked into Pop’s and looked around. It was already packed--as if the entire population of the school had gone there--but he knew that his friends would be able to find a table, even on a Friday afternoon. That was when he noticed two figures at his regular spot and his heart transformed into a rock within his chest.

 

Betty was sitting there with Archie Andrews, of all people, giggling at something he’d said. The moment he saw them, Jughead’s feet became possessed by some sort of spirit. He didn’t even realize that he’d walked over to their table until they were both looking up at him. Something glinted in Betty’s eye, an unfamiliar look, and it had him backpedaling.

 

“Hey, Jughead,” said Archie, unsuspecting that anything was wrong.

 

He glanced over at the jock. “Hey,” he said. “I, uh,” he thought fast, “I just wanted to tell you, I saw some people outside messing with your car, Archie.”

 

The ginger menace was out of his seat in an instant. His quick, “Thanks,” was lost as he rushed past Jughead and out the door.

 

Betty rolled her eyes as Jughead sat down in Archie’s spot. “I was on a date, thank you very much for ruining it,” she snapped.

 

He didn’t need to hear those words from her mouth, not when he was still desperately in love with her. Jughead sighed. “Sorry, Betty,” he said. “I just had to know if you still felt the same way about me, because I can’t stop thinking about you.”

 

Her eyebrows rose as she stared at him, an incredulous look spreading across her face. “Really?” she asked. “I thought--”

 

Jughead interrupted. “I know I’ve been an asshole. Let me make it up to you. Please.”

 

She thought about it. “Okay,” she said, smiling a little.

 

Before he could reply, he saw his friends walking into Pop’s. Cheryl and the girls were flanked by Sweet Pea and Fangs, with a few other teen Serpents trailing behind. Jughead prayed to whatever gods could hear him that this would go okay, glancing over at Betty and willing her to understand why he couldn’t be exactly the same person he’d been when they were alone at the beach. She just sipped the milkshake she’d ordered with Archie, looking at him through her lashes and making his heart skip a beat.

 

Despite whatever was eating Veronica, the night went alright. Cheryl and Toni left together after she tossed a milkshake in Sweet Pea’s face. All in all, at least Betty and Jughead weren’t the focus of anyone’s scrutiny.

 

The following night, Saturday, he picked her up on his motorcycle and took her to the movies. Jughead wasn’t even sure what they were watching, his heart was hammering so fast. It was going alright until he saw a few people from school enter at the front of the theater and stare at him a bit too long.

 

Then, he felt compelled to run his hand from her knee upward.

 

Then, Betty slapped his arm away and glared at him, getting out of her seat.

 

Then, he knew he’d messed up again.

 

She snapped at him, “You were such a gentleman over the summer, Jughead Jones. If you ever wake up and stop trying to be someone you’re not, let me know. Until then--just leave me alone!”

 

No one had to tell him that he’d been an asshole again. He knew it. As he watched Betty storm out of the theater, her words echoed in his mind. How could he stop being someone he wasn’t? He didn’t have the heart to tell her--the Jughead she’d met over the summer was the person he wasn’t. This was who he was, who he’d always been in this town. What could he do to become the person she wanted him to be?

 

_You don't remember me, but I remember you_

_'Twas not so long ago, you broke my heart in two_

_Tears on my pillow, pain in my heart_

_Caused by you, you_

 

He looked up at the bleachers where Betty was flirting with Archie. The wind was blowing the skirt of her cheerleading uniform just so, sending her ponytail whipping around the side of her face. For an instant, Jughead could see her in her swimsuit and sunhat, reclining on the beach. The mental image steeled his resolve, and he began to run down the track.

 

Betty glanced up as he reached the first hurdle. The look of surprise on her face was evident. Jughead tried not to keep looking at her, realizing that he was going to fall flat on his face if he kept turning his head toward the bleachers.

 

Those thoughts went through his mind as his body wrapped itself around the next hurdle, sending him plummeting face-first toward the track.

 

Betty yelped his name from the stands, and moments later she was at his side. He pushed himself up, brushing off his hands. He’d only wounded his pride, it seemed.

 

“What were you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide with concern. “Since when do you run track?”

 

“Since you told me to be myself,” he replied seriously.

 

Betty looked at him for a long moment. Jughead thought that she might have been angry, but her lips turned up in the shadow of a smile. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

_Blue moon you saw me standing alone_

_Without a dream in my heart_

_Without a love of my own_

_Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for_

_You heard me saying a prayer for_

_Someone I really could care for_

 

The dance started out well, until some students from a rival high school let themselves into the gymnasium. Ethel was crying as people disrupted her massive paper-mache decorations, but Betty was too busy dancing with Jughead to notice. This took her back to their evenings together on the pier last summer, when they’d dance until the sun had set long ago, until their feet were too tired to go on. Then he’d give her a ride home, and she’d kiss him, and sleep until they could do it all over again the following day.

 

After the ups and downs they’d had during the school year, it was a relief to dance with him at prom. Betty found herself smiling incessantly. Even though the school had been entered into a televised reality dance-off, the cameras and production crews were the last thing on her mind. Tonight was for her and Jughead, and she couldn’t have been happier.

 

Until a blonde girl from the other school cut between them, pulling Jughead away, giving Betty a territorial look. In that instant, Veronica was at her side.

 

“That’s Sabrina,” she whispered, so that Betty could hear. “She’s Jughead’s ex girlfriend.”

 

Betty watched for a moment, until she realized that Jughead wasn’t going to break away from Sabrina and find her in the crowd again. As the dance-off continued, Betty pushed her way through the crowd and left before anyone could see her crying.

 

_Sandy, you must start anew_

_Don't you know what you must do?_

_Hold your head high_

_Take a deep breath and sigh_

_"Goodbye to Sandra Dee..."_

 

After the dance-off, Jughead was furious. Sabrina and Malachi had come specifically to disrupt the television program and antagonize Betty. It was exactly what he had feared when she’d come back into his life. Over the summer, he’d been able to pretend that the Ghoulies and the Serpents were someone else’s problems. He’d driven to the tourist beach, rather than going to the private area where everyone from school tended to go. His romance with Betty had been untainted by any of them, and Sabrina had inserted herself into the dance specifically to remind him that he wouldn’t be allowed to be the person that Betty wanted him to be.

 

He was challenging Malachi to a race before he’d even through it through. Sweet Pea appeared at his side, flanked by other members of their gang. With a look at their shop car, Malachi gleefully accepted.

 

“If you lose, you forfeit all your territory, Serpent Prince,” he laughed, gunning his engine so that flames shot out of his tailpipes. Sabrina laughed in the passenger seat, raising one hand in a wave as they pulled away.

 

When they met in the runoff, Jughead slid into the driver’s seat. His only comfort was Sweet Pea at his side, just as determined as he was to keep their territory out of the Ghoulies’ clutches.

 

Sabrina waved them forward, and then the only thing that Jughead knew was speed. He flew past Chery, Toni, and Veronica, flew past the Serpents, past the supports for the expressway overpass...and, fleetingly, from the corner of his eye, he imagined that he saw a small figure perched far away from the track in a yellow sundress and a white cardigan. Shaking all thoughts of Betty from his mind, he spun the car at the turning point, flooring it the moment that they’d straightened.

 

Malachi laughed and swiped his car alongside their project, slicing into the body with some of the razor-sharp accents he’d attached to his doors. Jughead angled the wheel sharply left, driving into the razors, forcing Malachi to drive directly toward one of the overpass supports. At the last moment, when Malachi realized that he was going to lose this game of chicken, he veered left and hit the water in the spillway.

 

It made his car spin out, just as Jughead had counted on. As he and Sweet Pea flew over the finish line, he threw the car into park and leaped out, raising his fists triumphantly into the air while everyone cheered.

 

As Betty watched the race, she reached a few conclusions. First, this was who Jughead really was. And when she thought about it, she found that she really didn’t mind. Second, she was done focusing on being a perfect teenage girl. She was ready to live her life--why had she been giving Jughead such a hard time this year, when her existence was so boring? Third--if she was going to do this, and do it right, she would need help.

 

She looked up as Veronica made her way up the side of the spillway, a bittersweet smile spreading over her face. It was unfair of her to expect Jughead to be something he wasn’t. But Betty’s best California friends were what she would have considered bad before she’d moved here, and they were happy, and she’d never classify any of them as bad people.

 

“Hey, Veronica, can I ask you for a favor?” she said.

 

_I got chills, they're multiplyin', and I'm losin' control_

_'Cause the power you're supplyin', it's electrifyin'_

_You better shape up, cause I need a man, and my heart is set on you_

_You better shape up, you better understand, to my heart I must be true_

_Nothing left, nothing left for me to do_

 

Jughead walked slowly through the school fair, his eyes picking over the students around him. Everywhere he looked, he could see his friends happily enjoying themselves, but no sign of the blonde that had twisted her way into his heart. He’d left his leather jacket at home, pulling a plain sweater over a white t-shirt. He looked more like Archie Andrews than he ever had in his life, but if that was what he had to do to win Betty back, he would do it.

 

When Sweet Pea snickered at him, Jughead threatened to knock his teeth down his throat. That took care of everyone else’s ridicule, too.

 

He saw Cheryl and Toni walking hand in hand just ahead. Jogging a little to catch up with them, he said, “Hey, have you seen Betty?”

 

Cheryl turned, a smirk twisting her lips, and she said, “Look behind you, Romeo.”

 

When Jughead turned, he felt like time had slowed to a crawl.

 

Betty was approaching, only it wasn’t Betty as he knew her. She was wearing a skin-tight miniskirt and some sort of flowy top that tied behind her neck. Her hair was free of its usual ponytail, curling around her shoulders and floating in the spring breeze. She’d done her makeup differently, darkening her usual pallet, and her eyes looked smoky and fierce and sexy in a way that made chills run through his entire body.

 

She brightened a little when she saw him, standing there in his ridiculous sweater, and she walked straight towards him.

 

“Betty?” he asked, hardly able to believe his eyes.

 

Veronica elbowed her, winking at him, and departed with her red jacket slewn over her shoulder. That was when he noticed a similar jacket dangling from Betty’s hand. His mind struggled to compute the equation and realize that the girls had let her into their clique at last.

 

“Don’t look so surprised, Juggie,” she breathed, her red lips curling around his name. He took a step toward her, watching her face, reaching out to pull her toward him. Betty smiled and melted against him, curling her fingers in his hair, tugging a little. “You’ve been a bad boy this year.”

 

He thought that his heart might burst. Never, ever in his life had he been so turned on by such simple words. “Are you going to punish me?” he asked, eyebrows rising.

 

Betty’s response sounded downright wicked. “Oh, absolutely.”

 

Then she kissed him, her tongue sliding against his. Jughead felt like his entire body was tingling with tiny explosions, like if she kept doing this he really might die in her arms. Something between them had slid into place at last, and he knew that after today they were going to be together, forever. He was never going to let Betty go or disappoint her again.

 

_When we go out at night_

_And stars are shinin' bright_

_Up in the skies above_

_Or at the high school dance_

_Where you can find romance_

_Maybe it might be love_

 

What had started as a summer romance turned out, for Betty, to be her one and only romance. She slid onto the back of Jughead’s bike, his leather jacket cocooning her in his warmth, and wiggled her hands free of the slightly too-long sleeves. Clasping them over his abdomen, she leaned forward and pressed herself against his back.

 

They drove along the shoreline, heading south, and Betty realized that she’d been wrong the entire year. She was the one who’d been pretending to be someone she wasn’t. This was the happiest she’d been in her life.


End file.
